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Dr. Everett Worthington spent thirty years building the most rigorously tested forgiveness program in psychological science — and the day he turned in his first book on the subject was the day his mother was murdered in a home invasion. Three years later, his brother, who had discovered her body, took his own life, after Everett — a psychotherapist, a big brother — had failed to talk him into counseling. So this is not abstract research. The man giving us the REACH model, the distinction between decisional and emotional forgiveness, the six-step protocol for responsible self-forgiveness, and a vision of forgiveness scaling from heart to home to homeland is the man who has had to apply every move he teaches to the people he loved most. We spent the hour on the science, the tools, and at the end, on why the algorithmic version of America is currently training us to become exactly the kind of community in which forgiveness will not happen. Dr. Everett L. Worthington Jr. is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he taught for more than forty years before formally retiring in 2017 and remaining affiliated with the department. A licensed clinical psychologist and past president of the American Psychological Association's Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, he has published more than thirty-eight books and four hundred scholarly articles across forgiveness, humility, positive psychology, and marriage and family. His REACH forgiveness program has been validated by more than thirty randomized control trials worldwide. Explore the Science of Forgiveness — Greater Good Science Center The GGSC forgiveness hub brings together research, practices, and essays for anyone thinking seriously about forgiveness — theologically, pastorally, or personally. Join our online class – THE FUTURE OF RELIGION Tripp and Ilia Delio are teaming up for a brand-new four-week online class, The Future of Religion — for everyone who's read the books, asked the questions, and realized the faith they inherited doesn't quite fit anymore. Together they'll trace religion's evolutionary arc and map what's emerging on the other side. Includes 4 video lectures, 4 live Q&As (replays available), and a community of fellow travelers. Donation-based, pay what you're able (including $0). Live sessions start this month — register at www.thefutureofreligion.com This podcast is a Homebrewed Christianity production. Follow the Homebrewed Christianity, Theology Nerd Throwdown, & The Rise of Bonhoeffer podcasts for more theological goodness for your earbuds. Join over 75,000 other people by joining our Substack - Process This! Get instant access to over 50 classes at www.TheologyClass.com Follow the podcast, drop a review, send feedback/questions or become a member of the HBC Community. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Episode 530 / Raul De Lara(Born in Culiacán, Sinaloa, México – 1991) Raul De Lara is a sculptor who explores the emotive and storytelling qualities of materials. He is interested in how social, cultural and spiritual qualities can be imbued into wood through the act of carving. He practices traditional hand carving and power carving techniques through the visual language of nature, humor, and magical realism. His research preserves, honors and propels forward traditional uses of wood while combining them with new developments in the global industry of woodworking. Raul immigrated from Mexico to the United States at the age of 12, and has been a DACA recipient since 2012. His work reflects on themes of belonging, queer identity, and his im migrant experience. He is currently living and working in Queens, NY. Raul received his MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2019, and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2015. Recent solo exhibition sites include The Contemporary Austin, SCAD Museum of Art and Gaa Gallery. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally at the Tucson Museum of Art, Wharton Esherick Museum, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture, The Armory Show, Hermès Paris, Alexander Berggruen Gallery, The Hole, Honor Fraser Gallery, and Reynolds Gallery, among others. Raul 's selected awards include the Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Craft, the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Craft/Sculpture, and Art in America Magazine's Top 20 Global New Talent, as well as residencies at Wendell Castle Workshop, Silver Art Projects, LMCC Governor's Island, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Haystack Mountain School of Craft, Ox-Bow School of Art, Penland School of Craft, and Chicago Artists Coalition, among others.
Award-winning communication coach, corporate trainer, and financial educator Victoria Ferrer joins Tes of Revolutionary Woman to discuss confidence, public speaking, executive presence, cultural intelligence, financial education, and women in leadership. Victoria shares how personal experiences shaped her passion for helping people communicate with impact, build financial security, and lead with purpose. Maria Victoria “Vicky” Ferrer is an award-winning Corporate Trainer and Communication Coach who empowers adults and teens to rise with confidence, clarity, and cultural intelligence. With a career spanning continents, she transforms how people speak, lead, and perform by blending behavioral science, improvisation, executive presence training, and deep global insight. A four-time Distinguished Toastmaster and recipient of Toastmasters International's prestigious 2022 President's Citation Award, Vicky leads with both vision and heart. Having lived in the Middle East for more than two decades, she served as a training consultant to five American university branch campuses—Georgetown University, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon, Weill Cornell, and Virginia Commonwealth University—where she designed and delivered programs in leadership communication, intercultural competence, professional presence, classroom facilitation, and high-stakes presentations. Across corporate and academic environments, Vicky has trained business owners, senior leaders, managers, women professionals, and emerging talent in executive communication, persuasive storytelling, negotiation presence, crisis communication, team dynamics, emotional intelligence, stakeholder engagement, and speaking with authority under pressure. She is known for helping high performers articulate ideas with impact, navigate multicultural workplaces, influence decision-makers, and step confidently into visible leadership roles. Through powerful training, mentorship, and advocacy for lifelong learning, she champions the belief that every voice deserves to be heard and every individual has the capacity to lead with purpose. Vicky isn't just building speakers or leaders—she's building changemakers. To learn more about Victoria Ferrer: Website: https://victoriaferrerllc.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/victoriamferrer/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vmferrer/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vferrerbdbamboo . . . . This episode used the following music: Time to Shine by tubebackr & Popsicles https://soundcloud.com/tubebackr https://soundcloud.com/popsiclesmusic Creative Commons — Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported — CC BY-ND 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://www.audiolibrary.com.co/tubebackr-and-popsicles/time-to-shine Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/Cvbjhx6X4ZY
Breathing is the only bodily process that can be practiced consciously and unconsciously, tapping into the physical, spiritual and mystical all at once with a simple intake and release of the breath. Yet, like many parts of the body and self, this process has been trivialised and mechanised by the head-centric dominant culture, blocking the foundational gateway to consciousness that makes us the relational, caregivers we innately are. How can we bring the conscious back into the “unconscious” through breathwork as a crucial pathway to deprogramming the human being as separate to the rest of the world? In this month's episode, we bring onto the show Colleen Quinn, a transpersonal psychologist with a child specialty along with certification in breathwork. Colleen has taught psychology at The Ohio State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Columbus State Community College and has published research in many top-tier scientific journals, among them Emotion, Adolescent Psychology, and Residential Treatment for Children and Youth to name a few. In her private practice, spanning decades, Colleen used Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Internal Family Systems (IFS). Both techniques use breathwork to find and feel our body's stored traumas, loving them to bring healing. Through a guided breathwork practice to exploring the themes of her latest book Essence Merging, Colleen takes us on a journey to remembering the human being as embodied love through the foundational pathway to consciousness - the breath. The episode is an invitation for listeners to discover their own divine blueprint, and return home to the sacred self as deeply connected to life on Earth and beyond. Visit mindfullofeverything.com to access full episode shownotes, resources and archives. Connect with us on Instagram (@mindfullofeverything_pod) and Facebook (@mindfullofeverything).
In recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, we're proud to feature an inspiring conversation with our returning guest, Dr. Keita Franklin. Drawing from fascinating research in her latest book, The Humanity Cure: How Small Acts Can Change the World, we explore how small, intentional acts of care can make a significant impact on workplace safety and mental health. Dr. Franklin discusses how being present, showing compassion, and fostering a sense of belonging can create meaningful change across entire organizations and communities. She also highlights the critical link between mental health and safety, emphasizing how frontline leaders who demonstrate active care, along with peers who consistently support one another, help build psychologically safe workplaces where people feel valued, engaged, and committed to working safely. We also explore the transformative ripple effect of small acts of kindness and how helping others fuels a cycle of connection, resilience, and forward momentum. Don't miss this impactful episode as we take a deep dive into how small acts can make a big impact in elevating both safety and mental health. About the Guest: Dr. Keita Franklin is a nationally recognized public health leader and senior executive with more than 25 years of experience advancing large-scale systems change across federal and healthcare sectors. Her work has focused on suicide prevention, behavioral health, substance use, and the integration of public health approaches within complex organizations. A recognized expert in suicide prevention and public health leadership, she serves as Co-Director of the Columbia Lighthouse Project, where she leads national and international efforts to support the implementation and dissemination of evidence-based suicide risk screening protocols across healthcare, community, and organizational settings. Dr. Franklin holds a PhD in Social Work from Virginia Commonwealth University. For more information: https://thehumanitycure.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Est-ce que le fascisme a déjà eu son heure de gloire aux États-Unis ? Oui… et pas qu'un peu... Adhérez à cette chaîne pour obtenir des avantages : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4TCCaX-gqBNkrUqXdgGRA/join Script: Guilhem @DHistoiresenHistoire Vignette: Charles Boidin @Boidinch 00:00 Introduction 01:28 Grande dépression 04:33 Imported fascism 12:21 Little Italy 14:44 Homegrown fascism 21:15 Hollywood 24:14 Réactions 27:30 Résistances 33:56 Conclusion Pour soutenir la chaîne, au choix: 1. Cliquez sur le bouton « Adhérer » sous la vidéo. 2. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hndl Musique issue du site : epidemicsound.com Images provenant de https://www.storyblocks.com Abonnez-vous à la chaine: https://www.youtube.com/c/LHistoirenousledira Les vidéos sont utilisées à des fins éducatives selon l'article 107 du Copyright Act de 1976 sur le Fair-Use. Sources et pour aller plus loin: OUVRAGES • Johann CHAPOUTOT, Christian INGRAO et Nicolas PATIN, Le Monde Nazi (1919-1945), Tallandier, 2024 • Philippe FORO, L'Italie fasciste, Armand Colin, édition de 2016 • Gavriel David ROSENFELD and Janet WARD, Fascism in America : Past and Present, Cambridge University Press, 2023 • Bernard VINCENT, Histoire des États-Unis, Flammarion, édition de 2016 ARTICLES • Chip BERLET and Stanislav VYSOTSKY, “Overview of U.S. White Supremacist groups” Journal of Political & Military Sociology vol. 34 no. 1, 2006 • Sander A. DIAMOND, “The Years of Waiting: National Socialism in the United States, 1922–1933”, American Jewish Historical Quarterly vol. 59 no. 3, 1970 • David LOBB, “Fascist Apocalypse: William Pelley and Millennial Extremism”, 4th Annual Conference of the Center for Millennial Studies, November 1999 • Fraser M. OTTANELLI, “Mussolini à East Harlem : police fasciste et identité italo-américaine”, dans l'ouvrage : Les Petites Italies dans le monde, édité par Marie-Claude BLANC-CHALEARD et al., traduit par Éric VIAL, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007 MEDIAS • Jim BREDEMUS, “American Bund – The Failure of American Nazism”, TRACES, consulté en mars 2026 • Dana FRANK, “You Know About the KKK, but What About the Black Legion?”, Jacobin, octobre 2024 • Jean-Pierre GRATIEN recevant Hélène HARTER, “Années 30 : quelle tentation nazie aux Etats-Unis ? | Les débats de Débatdoc”, La Chaîne Parlementaire (LCP) – Assemblée Nationale (France), 28 oct. 2024 • Arlene STEIN, “America faced domestic fascists before and buried that history”, The Conversation, 17 décembre 2025 INSTITUTIONS • “In Our Own Backyard”, California State University Northridge, University Library Digital Collections, consulté en mars 2026 • “The White Shirts: their history, founder and activity”, FBI Archives, août 1933 • “Le Bund germano-américain”, Encyclopédie Multimédia de la Shoah, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, consulté en mars 2026 • John KNEEBONE and al., “Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940”, Virginia Commonwealth University, consulté en mars 2026 Autres références disponibles sur demande. #histoire #documentaire #usa #fascismeHébergé par Audiomeans. Visitez audiomeans.fr/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.
Melissa Mercado is the Tactical Manager and Practice Planner General Manager at TeamBuildr. Mercado joined TeamBuildr in 2024 first as a tactical manager before taking on additional responsibilities as the practice planner general manager in 2025. Prior to her current position, Mercado was a strength and conditioning coach at the School of Infantry-East for the Marine Combat Instructor Course and Headquarters and Support Battalion in Camp Lejeune, NC. She was in this role from 2022-2024 and spent the early part of 2022 as a strength coach at Wounded Warrior Battalion-East. Mercado began her coaching career as an intern coach at her alma mater, Radford University. She served in that role from 2017-2018 while also gaining additional experience as an intern at Virginia Commonwealth University in summer of 2018 and Clemson University the fall of 2018. From there she transitioned into the tactical field as a Fitness Specialist at Marine Corps Base Quantico, where she played a key role in the Force Fitness Instructor Course, developing the curriculum and instructing future FFI's and FFIT's. Outside of work, Mercado enjoys sunrise runs, discovering new coffee shops, lifting heavy things, walking her dog Wyatt, and cheering on the Pittsburgh Steelers and Clemson Tigers. Support the show
Although rare, recognizing NMOSD is crucial for improving patient outcomes through correct diagnostic and treatment approaches. Reports of atypical forms and increasing knowledge of clinical, imaging, and laboratory-specific features are fundamental for the accurate recognition of this condition. Research on targeted therapies and biomarkers measuring and predicting disease activity will improve NMOSD management. In this episode, Gordon Smith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Sara Mariotto, MD, PhD, coauthor of the article "Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder" in the Continuum® April 2026 Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders issue. Dr. Smith is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a professor and chair of neurology at Kenneth and Dianne Wright Distinguished Chair in Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Mariotto is a neurologist in the Neurology Unit in the Department of Neurosciences, Biomedicine, and Movement Sciences at the University of Verona in Verona, Italy. Additional Resources Read the article: Neuromyelitis Optica Spectrum Disorder Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @GordonSmithMD Full episode transcript available here Dr Smith: Neurology is an increasingly therapeutic specialty, and across many of our subspecialty areas, lots of new drugs are being approved. Are you interested in learning more about a historically disabling disorder for which we now have a spectrum of new therapies that, if used appropriately and promptly in the right clinical situation, promise to dramatically improve patient outcomes? If so, keep listening. My name's Dr Gordon Smith. Today I'll be talking with Dr Sara Mariotto about her article on neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder or NMOSD, which she wrote with Dr Romain Marignier. This article appears in the April 2026 Continuum issue on multiple sclerosis. Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast. Dr Smith: This is Dr Gordon Smith. Today, I'm interviewing Dr Sara Mariotto about her article on neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder or NMOSD, which she wrote with Dr Romain Marignier. This article appears in the April 2026 Continuum issue on multiple sclerosis. Sara, welcome to the podcast, and maybe you can start by introducing yourself to our audience. Dr Mariotto: Yes. Thanks, Gordon. I'm Sara Mariotto. I'm a neurologist, and I work at the Neurology Unit, University of Verona, where I do both clinical diagnosis and research into neuroimmunology---so, in particular, autoimmune encephalitis, NMOSD, and MOGAD. Dr Smith: Well, this is a super exciting area. Whenever I hear about NMOSD, I think of one specific patient I had, and I always think of her when I come across something like your article, which is really fantastic. So, before we dive into the details, I wonder if maybe you can just explain to our listeners who aren't up to speed on what NMOSD is, what the disorder is, and maybe why it's so important that all of our listeners learn how to recognize it quickly and get people started on therapy. Dr Mariotto: Yes, sure. So, neuromyelitis optica is an inflammatory autoimmune CNS disorder usually associated with aquaporin-4 antibodies, although there are a few cases, around 10%, who can be antibody-negative. And I think it's very much important to have in mind this disease and recognize it because it can be severe, as you pointed out; can present with very severe optic neuritis, myelitis, the brain stem, or area postrema syndrome. So, it can be really severe, affect quite young people around 40 years of age---although it can affect also the pediatric population and elderly people---and, importantly, it can be treated. It's very much important to treat this patient in the acute stage very quickly with steroids or plasma exchange in addition, and then to start a chronic treatment. So, we have treatment for this condition. So, it's very much important to, to recognize it quickly and treat the patient properly. Dr Smith: So, I wonder if we can talk a little bit about the diagnostic criteria and boundaries of NMOSD, right? So, someone who comes in with bilateral op- severe long segment optic neuritis or long segment myelitis, we think about it. But what are the boundaries? Should we be looking for this, for instance, in someone who comes in with a unilateral optic neuritis or looks like typical multiple sclerosis? Is it important to get aquaporin-4 antibodies in those patients? What do the diagnostic criteria say about this? Dr Mariotto: So, I wouldn't test aquaporin-4 antibodies in all patients with demyelinating conditions because although aquaporin-4 antibody assay is very specific, as for all assay and all antibody testing---also for MOG antibodies, for example---some false positive results can come out. So, I would suggest to test aquaporin-4 antibodies not in typical MS cases but in those who could be suggestive for not being MS, so in all those cases with atypical optic neuritis and myelitis or other syndromes. For those cases, it's important to test aquaporin-4 antibodies, but I wouldn't test them in all typical, classical MS cases. As I said, it's quite specific, the assay, so it's uncommon to have false positive results, but it can be. Dr Smith: Serum, CSF, both? Dr Mariotto: So, for aquaporin-4 antibodies, they're usually present in serum. They can be positive also in the CSF. And there are a few reports of isolated CSF positivity. But if we analyze larger samples volume, then it becomes clear that isolated CSF positivity is so, so rare that it's not recommended to test them in the CSF when serum is negative. So, for aquaporin-4 antibodies, the recommended matrix of testing is serum, which is different for MOG, which is not the topic of our article but is important to mention because MOG antibodies should be tested in serum and CSF. But aquaporin-4, I would recommend to test serum. Dr Smith: What are the boundaries between MOGAD and NMOSD? And you talked about the differential testing of antibodies, which I was going to ask about. But when should we think of NMOSD relative to MOG? Dr Mariotto: Yeah. There are aspects which are the one mentioned in the criteria, highly suggestive for NMOSD. But the clinical spectrum can be similar to that of MOGAD. Usually, although there are some clinical aspect---like, for example cortical encephalitis or ADEM, which is more typical for MOGAD, or others like area postrema syndrome, which are more typical of NMOSD. The spectrum can be similar among the two conditions, so that's why in our clinical experience, usually they ask both aquaporin-4 and MOG antibodies in patients. It's- for experts, it can be easy to differentiate the two conditions, but for nonexperts can not be so easy. Dr Smith: Can you define area postrema syndrome? I think not all of our listeners see that every day. Dr Mariotto: Yeah, sure. This is a syndrome which is highly suggestive of NMOSD. That's why I mention it. And it's characterized by nausea, vomiting, hiccups are known as the syndrome. And it is very, very suggestive because of the expression of aquaporin-4 in that area of NMOSD. That's why I strongly recommend for all patients who comes out to have this syndrome to test for aquaporin-4 antibodies. MOGAD is hardly ever positive for that, so I think that whenever you see a patient with that syndrome, you should think about NMOSD. Dr Smith: I'm just curious, aquaporin-4 is a water channel, which is kind of an interesting concept. Our conversation, I really want to make sure we give clinically important information to folks, but it's so curious to me at least, how does this actually result in a inflammatory demyelinating syndrome? For a simple neuromuscular guy, what's the immunopathogenesis of this? Dr Mariotto: Yeah, the immunopathogenesis is quite complicated, as in all CNS disorders. And of course, aquaporin-4 antibodies are the main focus, but they are not the only one. As you said, aquaporin-4 antibodies have a target, this water channel, which is at the basis of the disease, and they are produced by the interplay between T cells, B cells, and plasma cells. But then also eosinophils, macrophages, cytokines, and chemokines are involved, enter the CNS, and then another important component is complement, which is highly activated in this disease. At the end, we have astrocyte damage because astrocytes are the main target of the disease, but also axon and myelin are involved. So, it's a quite complex pathogenesis based on the antibodies, but not only on that. Dr Smith: And this will become important when we start talking about treatment. There seems to be a recurring theme of long segment demyelination, right? Optic neuritis is typically a large percentage of the length of the optic nerve, and obviously the myelitis se- more than three segments. Do you see other long segment areas of CNS demyelination, corpus callosum or things like that? Any ideas why that is, if that's true? Dr Mariotto: Of note, this is quite interesting because usually when we have NMOSD, we have a longitudinal involvement, especially of the optic nerve and spinal cord, while brain lesions are quite different. Like, we usually do not have the typical Dawsen fingers-like lesions that we have in MS, for example, or the classical periventricular or subcortical extensive lesions that we can see and we have in mind when we think about MS. In some cases with NMOSD, the brain is completely negative, so we do not see anything. And Dawsen lesion's quite suggestive of NMOSD. So, you're right. I mean, this is related partially to the expression of aquaporin-4, and that's why we have this typical involvement also for area postrema, for example, and maybe also our other examples of clinical aspect that we can see in these conditions. But it's basically linked with the expression of aquaporin-4, which is the main target of the disease. And that's why usually the brain doesn't show so much involvement as we can see in MS, for example. Dr Smith: I was actually really interested in some of the unusual manifestations or phenotypes, and I don't want to get into arcadia, really, but which of these should our listeners be familiar with that would really suggest that they should be thinking about NMOSD beyond the area postrema and other features that we've already talked about that are part of the core criteria? Dr Mariotto: Yeah. I mean, I think that the encephalic syndromes or also ADEM, which is most typical of MOGAD but can be observed also in NMOSD or PRES, for example, are syndromes that can be considered in patients with NMOSD. There are the typical ones, which are the ones showed in the criteria, but whenever we have a brainstem involvement or, like, these encephalic syndromes or also PRES, we should think about NMOSD also. Dr Smith: Another area I was interested in are red flags. In your article, you talk about red flags that might suggest an alternative diagnosis, right? And then this presumably is particularly important in seronegative patients, which 10% is not a reasonably high number, I suppose. What are red flags we should be thinking about for some other diagnosis? Dr Mariotto: Yeah. I would here mention two very important red flags. The first one is a very hyperacute onset. Usually these conditions, these inflammatory conditions have a subacute onset, so whenever you have a very, very acute onset, you should think about something else. This can occur sometimes also in NMOSD, but hardly ever occur. Like, a very acute myelitis, the first thing we should think about is a vascular origin, for example, with a lot of pain and not about NMOSD, although sometimes the differential diagnosis is not so easy. The second thing is a progression independently of relapses, which hardly ever occur in NMOSD. Usually in NMOSD, we have the onset, and then we have a relapsing disease course. That's why we have to treat patients always and not to stop treatment. But we do not have progression in the meanwhile, while we can have, for example, this in MS. Same thing is for MOGAD. So, these are two things that I think is very much important to keep in mind. Dr Smith: I want to pivot to talk about treatment because that's been super exciting. But rumor has it there are new diagnostic criteria coming for NMOSD in the next year. I bet you know a bit about those. Can you give our listeners any indication about kind of where the puck is going on this? Not so much what the criteria are specifically, but what sort of diagnostic challenges are the new criteria going to help us with once they come out? Dr Mariotto: Yeah. So basically, we are working on that, so you will read them in the next future. This is the good point of the conversation on the new criteria. And we work a lot on the definition, on the new definition and nomenclature of NMOSD; on the definition of seronegative NMOSD, which is also quite tricky; and then on the assay we should use to test aquaporin-4 antibodies, and also on potentially new syndromes which should be included into the main feature of the disease. But hopefully you will read about this very soon. Dr Smith: Looking forward to it. And Continuum Audio listeners, you heard it here first, so thank you. Let's pivot to treatment. This has been super exciting, and I wonder if the way to approach this is to start with acute management and then sort of chronic management. Would that make sense? Dr Mariotto: Sure. Dr Smith: Let's say I go on service on Friday, and I have a patient who comes in with positive aquaporin-4 and bilateral optic neuritis. What's the acute approach to managing that patient? Dr Mariotto: So, the first approach is to administer intravenous steroids, but I would not wait to escalate to plasma exchange. There is quite good evidence that we should treat the patient with additional plasma exchange very quickly, and every day of delay of plasma exchange can cause increased disability. So, we should treat patients with steroids first, and then if we are not satisfied by the recovery, soon start with a plasma exchange. There is also some evidence, although less, for IVIG, but it's important to try to treat them very quickly, even if it's Friday, you know, there is the weekend and so on. But I think it's very much important to start with steroids after excluding other infectious causes or so on, and then to start quickly with plasma exchange. The main problem could be that we do not have the results of the antibody yet. Dr Smith: Right. So, let me ask that question. You know, let's say my patient comes in on Friday, and clinical syndrome that really looks like NMOSD, and we're waiting for the aquaporin-4. There are many places where it's hard to get plasma exchange over weekends. And so, in that setting, are you better off doing the steroids over the weekend then PLEX on Monday, or should we just give IVIG because maybe it's as good as PLEX? What's your advice there? I'm trying to get ready for Friday because I know one's coming in. Dr Mariotto: That's true, that's true. Usually they come on Friday or Saturday. I think it's acceptable to have three days of steroids and see how the patient improves, and then after three days to start with plasma exchange. Actually, we have a very good improvement if we start between three and five days after onset. So, I think waiting for three days is acceptable just because we can see if the steroids work properly or not, and then we can quickly start to plasma exchange. But I would not wait, like, 10 days, you know, before starting with a plasma exchange, and I would not wait for antibody results. Dr Smith: Got it. Super helpful. And I'm actually not joking around, I learned recently that I have a reputation among our residents for having lots of optic neuritis when I'm on service, which I think is sort of karmic justice for being a peripheral nerve expert. But let me ask another question. So, let's say we do that, and the patient gets three or five days of pulse methylprednisolone and five courses of PLEX, and they're not doing well. Do you then just move right along into another agent B cell depletion therapy? I mean, what's your next step in escalation in the acute setting? Dr Mariotto: I would for sure start to, as you said, with steroids, plasma exchange, and in case IVIG, and then quickly move to chronic treatment. And for patients who are not recovering well, I would think of something which has a quick effect so we can really start treating patients very quickly. There are different options. And all over the world, there are different rules for using immunosuppression in NMOSD. Like in Italy, for example, it's different from US or other countries, Germany, for example. There are different approved treatments and different rules of using them before or after rituximab, for example. We all know that there are treatments approved for NMOSD all over the world. But in some countries, like for example in Italy, we should use rituximab first, and then if it doesn't work, escalate to the approved treatment. I know in the US it's different. But anyway, for a patient who does not improve quickly, I would start with something which has a quick effect on the disease. Dr Smith: And then rituximab versus inebilizumab, you know, CD20, CD19, what's your advice there? Is one preferable to the other, you know, if we have options to do either? Dr Mariotto: Yeah. So, between rituximab and inebilizumab, we know that the target, well, is different, but is anyway B cells, so CD19 and CD20. With CD19, we can affect both plasma blast, plasma cells, and B cells. That's why the target is broader. And of note, this is an approved drug, while rituximab is, in most countries, used as off-label treatment. Dr Smith: So inebilizumab would probably be preferable if we're able to do that. Dr Mariotto: Unfortunately, there are not so many studies comparing rituximab with the approved drug, which is, of course, a pity, but that's the case. While we have clinical trials for all the approved drugs, and although the trials were designed differently, as we mentioned in the Continuum paper, we can argue something of the comparison between the approved drugs. But it is not so clear the comparison between rituximab and the new drugs, which is also something that we should work on. Dr Smith: And then for chronic suppressive management, what other options are there? Dr Mariotto: So, in addition to B cells, target can be interleukin-6, as we know with tocilizumab or satralizumab, and then complement with eculizumab. These drugs are both based on the pathogenesis of the disease. That's why we also discuss it in the paper, which shows a clear involvement of complement, and among cytokines of interleukin-6. So, targeting these made clear that could improve the disease quite well, and that's why they designed some clinical trials on these drugs, which are now approved, as we said, for NMOSD. Dr Smith: Wow, so many options, and a lot of questions, but limited time. Let me just ask a couple of more. I see a lot of myasthenia patients, and there's a lot of variability, as you know, in patients with myasthenia, the extent to which complement is an important mechanism versus other, you know, important mechanisms. To what extent is response to a complement inhibitor kind of uniform across NMOSD? Or there's some patients who just don't respond to a complement inhibitor and others that respond really well. And then just, I'll just give my second question out is, you know, what about combination therapies for patients who have particularly challenging NMOSD? Dr Mariotto: So usually these patients have a terrific response to complement inhibitors, and this is also shown by the clinical trials where we saw how eculizumab have a very impressive effect on the disease. And also, maybe this is also your experience, a very quick effect. So that's why there are also thoughts on using it in a very acute stage of the disease. That was what I was thinking about before. But then it has a very huge effect on complement, which is a major factor involved in the pathogenesis of NMOSD also in the chronic disease stage, and that's what also we see from clinical trials. Usually, we prefer to switch treatment from one to another and not to combine them. Of course, in very difficult cases, this can be considered, but the recommendation is to switch from one of these approved drugs to the other, or from rituximab to one of the approved drugs, and try to find out the best for our patient before combining them. Dr Smith: The complement inhibitor trials are breathtaking, at least for me. If I'm trying to convince students to go into neurology, I'll say, "Take a look at that paper," because anyone who claims that we're "diagnose and adios" is so wrong. It's so exciting. So, at a high level, this must have fundamentally changed outcomes for patients. I mean, it's still a difficult disease, but what is the kind of prognosis for that patient I described who comes in, gets the therapy you talked about? What does their long-term outcome look like in this modern therapeutic environment? Dr Mariotto: So, NMOSD is almost always a relapsing disease. That's why, as we mentioned, we have to treat patients always. But the prognosis changes a lot since we were also able to use all these drugs for the disease. So, the prognosis changes if we recognize it properly and early, and if we treat NMOSD properly with immunosuppressives. So, whatever we choose it's important to start it quickly, and this is the only way that we have to improve the prognosis of this disease. We have very active cases, but we have also cases who responds quite well to this immunosuppressive treatment, since now we have, as mentioned, these ones which are very impressive and show incredible results. So, the prognosis of the disease change in the last year, thanks also to the improvement of the diagnosis and of the treatment choices for the disease. Dr Smith: I'm just... I- maybe my last question, you know, just at a personal level, not only for you as an expert who's caring for these patients, but in the patient community, this must have been a pretty exciting period of time, right? I mean, these, these drugs are coming fast and furious, and what a change. What's the kind of zeitgeist in the community, both your professional community and amongst the patient community about where we are? Dr Mariotto: Yeah, you're right. The last years were defined the years of NMOSD and also MOGAD because we had finally approved drugs which is relevant for all the disease that we treat and changed the landscape of the disease for clinicians, but also for patients. And we have more than one, as we said, so we have more options that we can also discuss with patients to try to choose the best one in terms of activity, but also route of administration or time. Some years ago, we just had rituximab, which is not approved in most of the countries, and now we have different approved drugs. And we improved the diagnosis of the disease thanks to the availability of live cell-based assay. And then we are working a lot also on biomarkers like GFAP, for example, which has been shown to be a very attractive biomarker able to mark disease activity and maybe also prognosis on this disease. So, you're right. I mean, in the last years, the landscape of NMOSD changed a lot. Dr Smith: Sara, thank you so much for talking with me. I could keep going for another half an hour, but I would be in trouble with my editor, so I think we probably need to wrap it up. But thank you so much. This has been very informative. Dr Mariotto: My pleasure. Dr Smith: Mine too. Thank you. Again, today I've been interviewing Dr Sara Mariotto about her article on NMOSD, which she wrote with Dr Romain Marignier. This article appears in the April 2026 issue of Continuum on multiple sclerosis. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues, and thanks to you, our listeners, for joining us today. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.
Familiarity with the clinical, MRI, CSF, and serologic features of MOGAD can help neurologists recognize this condition in clinical practice. Awareness of the utility and pitfalls of the MOG antibody test is critical. The current therapeutic approach is guided by retrospective studies and the application of immunotherapies used in other autoimmune neurologic disorders. In this episode, Gordon Smith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Eoin P. Flanagan, MBBCh, coauthor of the article "Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein Antibody–Associated Disease" in the Continuum® April 2026 Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders issue. Dr. Smith is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a professor and chair of neurology at Kenneth and Dianne Wright Distinguished Chair in Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Flanagan is a professor of neurology and the division chair of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Autoimmune Neurology in the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Additional Resources Read the article: Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein Antibody–Associated Disease Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @GordonSmithMD Full episode transcript available here Dr Smith: So, what neurological disorder can cause bilateral optic neuritis, transverse myelitis, ADEM, or can mimic acute flaccid myelitis, intracranial hypertension, viral encephalitis, or cause seizures? Sounds like the great imitator, perhaps. If you want to know and learn more about this syndrome and how you can treat it---and it is very treatable---keep listening. My name is Gordon Smith, and today I have the great opportunity to talk with Dr Eoin Flanagan from the Mayo Clinic on his article on myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein antibody associated disease, or MOGAD, which is in the April 2026 issue of Continuum on Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast. Dr Smith: This is Dr Gordon Smith. Today I'm interviewing Dr Eoin Flanagan about his article on myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein associated disease, or MOGAD, which appears in the April 2026 Continuum issue on multiple sclerosis and related disorders. Eoin, welcome to the podcast, and please introduce yourself to our audience. Dr Flanagan: Yeah, thanks so much. I'm Eoin Flanagan. I'm a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic. I'm originally from Ireland. I work in the neuroimmunology lab at the Mayo Clinic, and work and see patients with MS, MOG, and autoimmune disorders here in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr Smith: Your article is super interesting, I think, and this has been a really rapidly evolving area over the last, you know, many years. We have many more antibodies, and MOG is something that's been around for a while, but we've certainly learned a lot more about it. This is a topic that I think will be familiar to most of our listeners, but I wonder if maybe you can just begin by laying the foundation. Like, what is MOG? What's its typical presentation? Dr Flanagan: So, MOG is a protein on the surface of the oligodendrocyte or its CNS myelin, and it was always of interest as a potential antibody target, and initially it was investigated in multiple sclerosis. But subsequently, we recognized that the antibodies to MOG have a specific syndrome, of which about a quarter of patients are pediatric and then the remainder are adults. And they can present with a variety of syndromes, probably most commonly optic neuritis, but also acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM. Transverse myelitis can also occur, and then some other unusual brain and brainstem cerebellar syndromes can also occur. Dr Smith: I was really impressed in the very broad phenotypic spectrum of MOG. We'll talk more about that, of course. But I wonder if maybe you can tell us when we should be ordering MOG antibody? Given this broad variability, does anyone who has a CNS demyelinating disease need a MOG assay, only specific phenotypes? What guidance do you have for our listeners? Dr Flanagan: Yeah. It's a great question. So, I think you have to be a little bit careful because the MOG antibody test is a little bit sticky. So sometimes we can see some low-positive false positives. So, we don't wanna order it in every single patient with classical MS. So, I suppose we'll start with who not to order it in. I think it's also a very optic nerve- and optic neuritis-central disease, so I think you really need to be considering this in a patient with optic neuritis who does not have lesions in the brain suggestive of multiple sclerosis. And then we think about some of the features: if the lesion, the enhancement along the optic nerve is long, if it's bilateral, if there's a lot of optic disc edema accompanying that, we tend to think about MOG antibodies. And then children with demyelinating disease, MOG is over-represented in that cohort, so it accounts for about a third of those. So, if you have a child with CNS demyelinating disease, particularly if they're under twelve, with ADEM presentations or other presentations, you probably want to be ordering the MOG antibody test. And then a longitudinally extensive transverse myelitis in adults, certain types of cerebral phenotypes that we can get into, you would want to consider ordering MOG antibodies too. Dr Smith: Now, you point out in the article that it's really important that laboratories use the cell-based assay for MOG as opposed to an ELISA, for instance. Is this something folks need to be very attentive to, or are all of the commercial laboratories now using a cell-based assay? Dr Flanagan: Yeah. I think all of the commercial labs are using cell-based assays, so we don't really get into much of an issue. There are some differences between serum and CSF, so really, serum is the optimal sample to order. There is also some differences between the live cell-based assay and the fixed cell-based assay, where the live cell-based assay may have some advantages in terms of sensitivity. And then CSF is kind of still under evaluation about its role in the condition. So in general, it's a serum test. And then we have to remember that the antibody tends to be highest at the onset, and then it goes down over time. So, if you delay your testing or you're testing a patient long after the condition, it can go negative, for example. So it tends to be highest both around the relapses and particularly at the onset of the condition. Dr Smith: You mentioned earlier that the test is sticky, which I take to mean that there is some risk for low-titer false positives. How do you navigate that situation? When should we be suspicious about a false positive? Dr Flanagan: Yeah. I think there's some very useful features that can help you. You know, the main differential diagnosis is going to be multiple sclerosis, particularly in the US, in regions of the northern US where MS is particularly common. So, you really wanna be making sure that if you get a positive result, low positive, that it's not multiple sclerosis. And some of the best discriminating features are CSF oligoclonal bands. They're about 85% in MS and about 15% in MOG, so an easy number to remember, 85 and 15. And then the lesions in MOG, the brain lesions, tend to disappear over time. So, if you have the advantage of that follow-up MRI a year down the line, about 70% of lesions in MOGAD will resolve, while in MS, as we know, the term means multiple scars, so the MS lesions tend to persist over time. So, they are two quite useful features that can help discriminate. Dr Smith: And how about specific phenotypes or areas of involvement or imaging abnormalities that suggest MOG? One of the things I found really interesting in your article is there are a host of different syndromes that I think had largely been previously described, many of them, that became clear later that these were really tied to MOG antibodies. Presumably, that's helpful in interpreting the antibody assay in that patients who have, perhaps, a borderline low titer, for instance, but have a very typical phenotype are more likely to have MOG than those who have a more clearly MS-type phenotype. Dr Flanagan: Yeah, absolutely right. Yes. So, there's certain phenotypes that we don't tend to see with MS. The acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, or ADEM, is one that's particularly common in children. And about half of people that have ADEM will be positive for the MOG antibody. So that's a syndrome you need to look out for, which would be often in children, encephalopathy, and they would have multifocal white matter lesions, sometimes involving the gray matter. A second syndrome that was an interesting discovery from a Japanese group was this unilateral cerebral cortical encephalitis, where patients can have this swelling and T2 hyperintensity, often just on one side of the brain. And it's in the cortex, and some of those patients won't have any white matter lesions. And in that situation, it's important to order the MOG antibody, and that seems to be a specific phenotype of MOGAD. But sometimes people don't think about it because the white matter is not involved. So, if you see these patients, they often present with seizures, sometimes they even have fever accompanied by it. And if you see those patients and see this radiological feature, then you really want to consider ordering the MOG antibody too. Dr Smith: Yeah, I found that really interesting. And I- actually, my next question is perhaps a good follow-up on that, is, what are the diagnostic pitfalls? You give a lot of examples of situations and I think some cases where it's easy to get tripped up and misdiagnose someone who has MOG with another fairly common neurological problem. Dr Flanagan: Yeah, I think some of the things that can help you when you're determining if the MOG is a true positive or false positive is the level of the antibodies. The super high titers, if it's a clear positive or very strong positive, the likelihood is that that is much more likely to be MOGAD than those low positives just above the cutoff. So that can be useful to help you discriminate from false positives. Those lesions, again, if all the lesions persist over time, that's going to be more suggestive of multiple sclerosis. Other diagnostic pitfalls, I suppose, if it's a syndrome that's not really associated with MOG, like peripheral neuropathy or other syndromes where we'll see some case reports, but usually I would be very cautious about those kind of presentations. So usually, having the antibody at a high level, and then also if they've had other symptoms suggestive of MOGAD, like if a patient has had recurrent optic neuritis and then they have an unusual brain syndrome, or they start out with an unusual brain syndrome and then have recurrent optic neuritis. You know, there are situations that make it more likely if they're having other typical phenotypes of the MOGAD where we can kind of expand the spectrum, but we have to be careful. Dr Smith: I was really curious about the dynamic imaging findings. And you point this out both in terms of the resolution of imaging findings, but also in that patients who have an acute MOG syndrome often have very rapid evolution of the imaging abnormalities. I'm just curious, you know, why is that, and what do you make of it? Does it have a mechanistic implication, do you think? Dr Flanagan: I don't think we know for sure. I think there's probably a lot more happening than we see on MRIs sometimes. What sometimes can happen in about 10% of patients is the initial MRI can be normal. We don't tend to see that with multiple sclerosis or NMOSD. Then what we see is it evolving over time. So, at that time, if you do a CSF, you'll often see inflammation, but we don't see the lesions. Now, that might be because the MRI is not very good at picking up cortical involvement. That can be difficult to see in MRI. Or there could be other factors. It could be a functional effect on the MOG but without frank demyelination yet, for example. Or there could be edema that you- myelin edema that you can't see as a lesion yet on MRI. But we do see that if you repeat the MRI, sometimes it'll change a lot. So, you may go from one or two lesions on the first MRI to twenty lesions on the second MRI a week later. So, it does tend to change a lot. And then over time, those lesions also resolve. So, what I say is if it's a very suspicious situation---like a child comes in with new-onset encephalitis, has inflammatory CSF---you might wanna consider repeating that MRI down the line and seeing if it's changing. And then over time, you know, a repeat MRI a year after the onset when there's brain or spinal cord lesions can be very helpful just to make sure you're on the right track, because lots of those lesions will then disappear, and that's a very clear discriminator from multiple sclerosis. Dr Smith: Yeah, thanks. I mean, I was wondering the same thing about whether that particular feature might imply, you know, a functional abnormality as opposed to more of a structural abnormality. So probably a lot more to learn as we move forward. There are now consensus diagnostic criteria that were published a couple of years ago. I think you've already touched on kind of the general approach, but do you want to speak to those? I found your summary pretty helpful. Dr Flanagan: Yeah, I think that those criteria are quite useful. They have three main parts to them. The first part is having a characteristic clinical syndrome. So, we talked about ADEM, we talked about cerebral cortical encephalitis, transverse myelitis that's often longitudinally extensive, and optic neuritis being the main syndromes, but sometimes other brainstem or cerebellar involvement can be seen. And then the second part is having a positive MOG antibody. And then there's some caveats there. So, if you have a high positive, then you don't really need any additional supportive criteria. On the other hand, if you're low positive, to get at those sticky antibodies that make sure it's not a false positive, you need some additional supportive clinical or MRI criteria. Or if you're only positive in CSF, you need that additional criteria. You also need to be negative for the aquaporin-4 antibody, because they can overlap clinically. And some of those supportive criteria are things that we talked about a little bit earlier, longer lesions within the optic nerve, bilateral involvement, involvement of the nerve sheath or optic disc edema. This is a situation, MOG antibody disease, where your fundoscope is useful and looking in the back of the eye and seeing swelling, because we don't tend to see that quite as often. It's less common in multiple sclerosis, but we often see prominent edema in MOGAD. And then in the spinal cord, the lesions tend to be central in the cord. Sometimes they form this H sign where it's restricted to the gray matter, and they tend to be longer, sometimes involving the conus. Patients will often have neurogenic bowel or bladder. And then in the brain, deep gray involvement, those large lesions along the cortex with swelling are some of the typical features. And then the final step is exclusion of another diagnosis. Just like with any test that we do in neurology, our final step is going to be to put that into context. So that's just a normal thing that we will always do when we get a group of test results back that we don't know what it means. We have to put it into context. So, make sure it's not multiple sclerosis, everything else does not look like multiple sclerosis, and then you can be on your way to make a diagnosis. Dr Smith: Definitely encourage listeners to read your article. I guess I say that with every time I- or with everyone I talk to for Continuum Audio, but the images are really fantastic and the cases are fantastic. So, everything you've described is well-illustrated, including really nice schematic sort of diagrams that help differentiate NMO from MOG and MS. So, if you like MRI scans and good imaging frameworks, then this is the article for you. Dr Flanagan: I think that's true, and the other thing is that the imaging is quite helpful because it takes a while for that antibody to come back. We're lucky at Mayo Clinic, if you work here, it, it comes back faster for you. But for many places, that time of sending it in, so a lot of times you don't know right away. So, looking at scrutinizing that MRI can be very helpful to guide you on your way and to know what you're dealing with and how to approach both the acute treatment and plans to have potentially a steroid taper after the acute treatment and those kind of things that can help guide you in that regard. Dr Smith: Yeah. So, let's talk about treatment. You know, what's your approach to treating a patient who has an acute demyelinating syndrome related to MOG? Dr Flanagan: So similar to other things, MOG is very steroid responsive. So, we use high-dose IV methylprednisolone in adults. That would be one gram IV for five days. And then we also will sometimes use oral steroids, twelve hundred and fifty milligrams. That's a bit of a hassle because it's twenty-five fifty-milligram tablets, it doesn't come in a larger tablet version. But it's very helpful to patients because they can get started on it right away. You don't have to set up an infusion center. So, we have used those oral steroids often in people who don't have access to an infusion center, are not in the hospital. And particularly as it's often optic neuritis, some of those patients are seen in the outpatient setting, so we can get in with treatment quickly. In patients where it's more severe, it doesn't recover quickly with steroids, then we would consider escalating to plasma exchange as our second-line treatment, and there's some retrospective data that suggests that plasma exchange can be useful. That's gonna be particularly for those people who don't have that quick response to steroids, or maybe more severe phenotypes like that brain involvement with ADEM or cerebral cortical encephalitis, where those patients might be in the hospital and quite unwell. I will say, we might get on to this, that sometimes MOG can be very, very severe and even fulminant, where there can be increased intracranial pressure, and these patients can be in the ICU, and it can be life-threatening. And so, it's really important to treat those patients aggressively, and some patients have even required hemicraniectomy or additional treatment. Sometimes IL-6 blocking medications have been used in that situation. So, monitoring and treating increased intracranial pressure in those rare patients, probably 2 or 3% that have the very severe attack, is important. Dr Smith: I think one of the things I found interesting, and then I'd love to get your feedback on this, is that most patients with MOG seem to have a very readily treatable disorder that's monophasic, right? You treat them with steroids, and they do well. On the other extreme, there are these patients that have a much more malignant presentation, and there are some that sound like they benefit from prophylactic or some chronic therapy. What's your approach, right? In MS, we do serial scans to monitor, and obviously, our patients are on, you know, chronic disease-modifying therapy. How do you decide when you're going to provide some sort of prophylactic therapy? How do you monitor it? How long do you continue it? Dr Flanagan: That's a great point. We don't know for sure yet, but I think for the most part, our approach has been if the patient has a single episode, they recover well from that episode. So, if that's optic neuritis, they're back to twenty/twenty vision. They have recovered well. We don't tend to use chronic maintenance immunotherapy. Sometimes after the first attack, we'll do a little bit of a slow taper, maybe over four, six weeks. We have done longer than that. And then we won't place them on any long-term treatment, because it's about 50% of patients that may have a monophasic disease, so we don't want to treat all those people who are destined never to have another relapse. On the other hand, if a patient had a very severe episode, they're in the ICU, they're intubated, some of those patients then afterwards we will start them at least temporarily on an attack prevention medication for at least a few years to get them through. Some patients will be very fearful of future relapses in that situation. Or if they don't recover well, if they're blind in one eye after an episode and then their other eye is vulnerable, or they're left with some residual deficits neurologically from a myelitis, then we would often sometimes put those patients after the first attack. But most of the time, we're gonna wait and see if they get that second attack, and then once they have the second attack, that is when we would consider a steroid-sparing medication. But I will say that there's no proven medications. We don't have any clinical trial data available yet. So some of those patients with relapsing disease, we'll either try to enroll them in a clinical trial, or we'll use an off-label treatment to try and manage their disease based on what we've learned from neuromyelitis optica or from multiple sclerosis. A few different options seem to be better, and we can maybe get into that too. Dr Smith: Yeah, let's go there. So, what options are there? You mentioned in more fulminant disease IL-6 inhibitors, and by that I assume you mean tocilizumab, but what are the options when you want to use prophylactic therapy? Dr Flanagan: So, that tocilizumab can be beneficial in the very acute situation, in that malignant situation. But also as an attack prevention treatment, the IL-6 blockers seem to- some of the retrospective data seems to look like it works reasonably well, so we work and see if we can get that approved. Another medication that can work well is IVIG or subcutaneous immunoglobulin as a maintenance treatment, so we would sometimes give that, like, at least one gram per kilogram once a month. The benefit of that is it doesn't lower your immune system, so there's some advantages there, particularly in people who may be more prone to infections, older people. So, we'll sometimes use that. But we do get into a lot of challenges with insurance coverage, and it can be difficult to get these approved by insurance because we only have retrospective data out there. So then for some patients, if they're in a region where there's a clinical trial available, we might try to enroll them in a clinical trial. And there are some clinical trials underway now, so hopefully in the future we'll be able to have some FDA-approved medications that can have some Class 1 data that we can follow. Because it's hard when you're just following retrospective data or anecdotal reports, it's a little bit difficult to know exactly how well you're doing with your treatments. Dr Smith: Well, Eoin, I wonder if we could finish up by just looking into the future, right? I mean, it sounds like a fun patient population to take care of because you've got lots of great therapies and can have a durable impact. But sure would be nice to have more evidence-based therapies and an FDA approval. What trials are going on? What's the future look like? Dr Flanagan: Yep. So, there's some trials going on in the- a couple of worldwide trials. One is on an FCRN blocker called rozanolixizumab, which is kind of like a plasma exchange-type treatment which removes your antibodies, and it's a weekly subcutaneous treatment where adults are enrolled. And the second one is called satralizumab, which is another IL-6 blocking medication. And again, that one's given once monthly under the skin. And the trial for that also includes children down to age eighteen, so for adolescents, too, that can be an option. There are trials, I believe, in Asia for tocilizumab too, and there's one starting in Australia for rituximab. So, the good news is that we're going to have some really good data down the line for lots of different agents, and we'll be able to figure out which treatments work. And this will be really of great benefit to our patients when we get that Class 1 data to kind of guide us on what we should be using and really build on the success of some of the other conditions like neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, where we now have four or five approved, medications that work very well. Dr Smith: Well, Eoin, thank you. This is a great conversation. I will say that it... the topic that I was a little intimidated about. I'm a simple peripheral nerve guy, as you know. But I think moreso than any other Continuum article I've read recently, I'm, like, loaded for bear. I can't wait to go back on the inpatient service and look for some MOG patients, because your article really left me feeling kind of prepared to think through this in a clinical setting. So, thank you for the conversation, and congratulations on a really wonderful piece for Continuum. Dr Flanagan: Yeah, thanks so much. Always a great honor to be involved in the Continuum, and thanks to all the readers out there. Dr Monteith: This is Dr. Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.
Cancer has long been understood through a variety of biological frameworks, including genetic mutations, dysregulated signaling pathways, and uncontrolled cell proliferation. Yet, these models often capture the visible consequences of disease rather than the deeper metabolic dependencies that sustain tumor survival. Despite major advances in targeted therapies, a central challenge remains: what underlying mechanisms make cancer cells vulnerable to treatment, and how can these vulnerabilities be exploited more effectively? Increasing attention has shifted toward cellular metabolism—particularly lipid regulation and energy-sensing pathways such as AMPK—as critical determinants of tumor behavior. Scientists are now taking a closer look at how metabolism works together with stress responses like autophagy—and how this connection could be used to develop better cancer treatments. A new research paper was published in Volume 17 of Oncotarget, titled “The SCD1 inhibitor aramchol interacts with regorafenib and metformin to kill tumor cells.” The study was led by first author Michael R. Booth and corresponding author Paul Dent from Virginia Commonwealth University, in collaboration with Laurence Booth and Jane L. Roberts from Virginia Commonwealth University and John M. Kirkwood from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Full blog - https://www.oncotarget.org/2026/04/21/scd1-inhibition-strategy-shows-potent-synergy-with-regorafenib-and-metformin-in-tumor-cell-killing/ Paper DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28861 Correspondence to - Paul Dent - paul.dent@vcuhealth.org Abstract video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmX_c2e_-HY Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.28861 Subscribe for free publication alerts from Oncotarget - https://www.oncotarget.com/subscribe/ Keywords - cancer, macroautophagy, ER stress, aramchol, regorafenib, BID To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com and connect with us: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Oncotarget/ X - https://twitter.com/oncotarget Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oncotargetjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@OncotargetJournal LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oncotarget Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/oncotarget/ Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Oncotarget/ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0gRwT6BqYWJzxzmjPJwtVh MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM
From the TDS archive today, we feature conversations with John Lingan, author of Backbeats: A History of Rock and Roll in Fifteen Drummers and with Dr. Stephen Day, professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Teach A Kid to Save: A Fun, Hands-On Approach to Building Smart Money Habits. Sports clips:Sam Ersson (Philadelphia Flyers defenseman) (Flyers YouTube)Aaron Nola (Philadelphia Phillies starting pitcher) (NBC Sports Philly YouTube)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Episode Description: Happy Afro-April! Ariel Johnson joins the gang w a story about runnin the gauntlet with the be-antlered big boys over in ColoradoIn their own words: I'm a 4th year PhD candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University studying how forest disturbances shape ecosystem structure, carbon cycling, and long-term ecological stability of Northern hardwood forests in Michigan. Before grad school, I worked for public lands and universities, as a biological technician, where I developed a passion for making ecological work more accessible and inclusive. I try to continue to advance both science and equity through her service with the Virginia Wilderness Committee and as a co-chair of the American Geophysical Union's Biogeosciences Early Career Committee. I'm dedicated to producing science that informs forest conservation, while helping build a more inclusive and representative environmental workforce.This episode supports: Moose SafetyHelp us keep making the show: Patreon.com/WeOutHerePodTwitter and IG @TheWeOutHerePodStart learning about whose land you're on and begin taking action https://native-land.ca/
BUFFALO, NY – March 31, 2026 – A new #research paper was #published in Volume 17 of Oncotarget on March 27, 2026, titled “The SCD1 inhibitor aramchol interacts with regorafenib and metformin to kill tumor cells.” Led by Michael R. Booth, Laurence Booth, and Jane L. Roberts from Virginia Commonwealth University, with corresponding author Paul Dent from the same institution and John M. Kirkwood from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, the study examines how aramchol interacts with regorafenib and metformin to kill tumor cells, particularly patient-derived uveal melanoma (UM) cells and cholangiocarcinoma cells. The authors report that aramchol, regorafenib, and metformin interact to enhance tumor cell killing, with the strongest effects seen when metformin is added to aramchol plus regorafenib. In patient-derived UM cells and LD-1 cholangiocarcinoma cells, the three-drug combination increased autophagosome formation and autophagic flux, while knockdown of Beclin1, ATG5, or LAMP2 reduced autophagosome and autolysosome formation and lowered cell killing. The study also found that BID contributes to the lethal response, supporting a multifactorial mechanism involving macroautophagy and death-receptor signaling. “Our data demonstrates that UM cells are killed by treatment with aramchol plus regorafenib plus metformin via enhanced autophagic flux and that this combination may have the potential to control UM tumors that have metastasized to the liver.” The authors also note that while SCD1 knockdown increased baseline tumor cell death, it did not replicate the full anticancer effects of aramchol, suggesting additional molecular targets contribute to its activity. They emphasize the need for further in vivo studies to evaluate the therapeutic potential of this combination in metastatic uveal melanoma, particularly in liver-targeted disease. DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28861 Correspondence to - Paul Dent - paul.dent@vcuhealth.org Abstract video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmX_c2e_-HY Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.28861 Subscribe for free publication alerts from Oncotarget - https://www.oncotarget.com/subscribe/ Keywords - cancer, macroautophagy, ER stress, aramchol, regorafenib, BID To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com and connect with us: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Oncotarget/ X - https://twitter.com/oncotarget Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oncotargetjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@OncotargetJournal LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oncotarget Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/oncotarget/ Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Oncotarget/ Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/0gRwT6BqYWJzxzmjPJwtVh MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM
Today, I'm giving you a “behind the reporting” podcast, where I'll provide you my personal opinion, experience and added value with information that did not make it into my recent article for the U.S. News titled: How to Start a Yoga Practice for Depression, According to Experts.In the article, I feature Dr. Ken Duckworth the Chief Medical Officer at the National Alliance of Mental Illness and author of the book, You Are Not Alone. Amy Weintraub, someone who attributes her recovery from depression in large part to yoga. While her therapist once told her that she would always struggle with mental health, Weintraub is a published author who has also trained hundreds of yoga teachers how to teach yoga for depression. Dr. Patricia Kinser, dean of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Nursing and Judith B. Collins and Joseph M. Teefey Distinguished Professor. She researches yoga- and mindfulness-based interventions for mental health. I will provide their expert insights alongside my sentiments for this episode of the yoga with jake podcast.Support the show
How deeply was the British Crown involved in the transatlantic slave trade? New research by historian Brooke Newman argues that, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, until well into the 19th century, the Crown and its navy helped expand, finance and protect the trade in enslaved African people. In this episode, Newman joins historian and broadcaster Helen Carr to examine how the monarchy's links to slavery complicate Britain's national story about abolition and its colonial past. Drawing on her new book, The Crown's Silence, she explores the evidence, considers how the subject of reparations has become caught up in the culture wars, and reflects on what a formal apology from King Charles III could mean. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of Slavery and the British Monarchy is out now. If you'd like to become a Member and get access to all our full conversations, plus all of our Members-only content, just visit intelligencesquared.com/membership to find out more. For £4.99 per month you'll also receive: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared episodes, wherever you get your podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series - 15% discount on livestreams and in-person tickets for all Intelligence Squared events ... Or Subscribe on Apple for £4.99: - Full-length and ad-free Intelligence Squared podcasts - Bonus Intelligence Squared podcasts, curated feeds and members exclusive series … Already a subscriber? Thank you for supporting our mission to foster honest debate and compelling conversations! Visit intelligencesquared.com to explore all your benefits including ad-free podcasts, exclusive bonus content and early access. … Subscribe to our newsletter here to hear about our latest events, discounts and much more. https://www.intelligencesquared.com/newsletter-signup/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
In today's episode, we sit down with Dr. Aaron Hartman to discuss his book, UnCurable: From Hopeless Diagnosis to Defying All Odds. As a board-certified physician, clinical researcher, and founder of Richmond Integrative & Functional Medicine, Dr. Hartman's path took a profound turn after adopting his daughter, Anna, who was diagnosed with severe neurological injury and cerebral palsy and labeled "incurable." Her unexpected progress challenged those assumptions and ultimately led him to embrace functional and precision medicine as a new framework for healing. Dr. Hartman was trained in conventional family medicine and earned his MD from the Medical College of Virginia. He also served as a Major in the U.S. Air Force, where he oversaw medical clinics in both the United States and Europe and received additional training in cardiology, dermatology, and nuclear and biological warfare medicine. Throughout his career, Dr. Hartman has participated in more than 70 clinical trials, published research including work in The Lancet, and cared for patients across four continents in more than 100,000 clinical encounters. He is triple board-certified, with advanced credentials in integrative, functional, metabolic, regenerative, and anti-aging medicine, and he previously served as an Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. Join the conversation to learn more about: The three pillars of healing with functional medicine. The ways that diet can heal disease. How to holistically cure conditions outside the boundaries of conventional medicine. The intersection of gut health and brain health. This episode offers a thoughtful look at the evolving boundaries of modern healthcare, and what it means to rethink a diagnosis once considered final. You can connect with Dr. Hartman on Instagram at @aaronhartmanmd.
The opening weekend of the men’s March Madness concluded late Sunday night. The women’s first two rounds of their tournament are ending today (Monday) with eight games being played. As widely expected, the majority of the top 16 seeds in the women’s bracket have remained intact through Sunday evening. Not so in the men’s division after the second round. Down went #1 East seed and defending men’s champion Florida! The Gators were chomped by 9th seed Iowa 73-72 on Sunday in Round 2. Iowa’s Hawkeyes (now 23-12) lost four of its last five games coming into the NCAA tournament. Iowa finished in 9th place in the Big Ten Conference this season with a mediocre 10-10 record. Obviously, something has clicked for the Hawkeyes. Iowa’s new basketball coach brought a long track record of success to Iowa City Ben McCollum isn’t a household name among men’s college basketball coaches – yet. The 44-year old head coach at Iowa had won four national titles at the NCAA Division II level over his 15 years at Northwest Missouri State University in rural Maryville, Missouri. That success translated into job offer for McCollum at Drake University in Des Moines last season. The coach took the Division 1 Bulldogs into the second round of the NCAA March Madness tournament last year and finished with an amazing 31-4 record. Afterwards, the state’s largest public university in Ben McCollum’s birthplace of Iowa City made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. The Iowa Hawkeyes had fired Fran McCaffery in March, 2025 after 15 seasons at the school. Though Coach McCaffery’s teams made the NCAA tournament field on seven occasions, the Hawkeyes never advanced beyond the second round. Until this year – under new head coach Ben McCollum. Iowa defeated defending national champion Florida 73-72 on a three-point shot with less than five seconds to play. The gritty Hawkeyes are advancing to the Sweet Sixteen for the first time since 1999. They will face another Big Ten upstart in the University of Nebraska. Cornhuskers coach Fred Hoiberg had the loudest fans this weekend Oklahoma City is 430 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska. You would never have guessed the arena wasn’t transported from Oklahoma to Nebraska over the weekend. OKC’s basketball arena just hosted the first two rounds of the South Region. If you watched either game involving the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the 18,000-seat arena sounded like those contests were being played in a major Nebraska city. Coach Fred Hoiberg’s Nebraska Cornhuskers are now 26-8. They claimed the school’s first ever March Madness men’s basketball victory on Thursday with a convincing 76-47 win over Sunbelt champion Troy. Big Red basketball fans then returned in even larger numbers Saturday for the team’s second round match-up against SEC tournament runner-up, Vanderbilt. In one of the most dramatic game of this year’s very exciting NCAA tournament, Nebraska’s loud and proud fans pushed Big Red to grab a two point lead on a basket with 2.2 seconds remaining. Then, Vanderbilt’s talented freshman guard Tyler Tanner lofted a desperation half-court shot which could have won the game at the buzzer. The ball was online the entire way. It hit the backboard, bounded inside of the rim, but somehow bounced back out again. Nebraska survived 74-72 and advanced into the Sweet Sixteen round this week in Houston against fellow Big Ten Conference rival, Iowa. Cornhuskers coach Fred Hoiberg and Iowa men’s coach Ben McCollum have something unique in common – other than playing in the Big Ten Conference. These two successful basketball coaches were Finance majors in college. Today’s NIL-driven college sports teams require coaches who can manage a payroll as well as they teach a pick and roll. This weekend’s games may end the coaching careers for other top basketball coaches! University of Kansas basketball coach Bill Self is 63 years old. He accepted the Jayhawks top job 23 years ago at age 40. Coach Self has won two national championships while at Kansas (2008 and 2022). His Jayhawks have participated in the NCAA March Madness post-season tournament in each of his 23 years at the school. That’s amazing! Coach Self’s Kansas Jayhawks were just bounced out of the NCAA tournament on Sunday by a spunky, quirky St. John’s team 67-65. KU finished the season 24-11. The Kansas Jayhawks simply failed to launch this season. They invested (quite literally) much of the team’s capital into signing a prima donna 5-star basketball recruit named Darryn Peterson. Coach Self already knew that Peterson would be another “one and done” freshman player looking to impress NBA scouts in this June’s annual college draft. Peterson played well at times and will, no doubt, become a high draft selection in the “We rarely play defense” NBA. He seems quite ready for his future role. Darryn Peterson took his basketball talents to Kansas. That’s only because the NBA requires future players to be at least one year removed from high school prior to entering their draft. Much like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, Peterson did not seem to play with much of a heart on the basketball court. He appeared disinterested most of the time when the ball wasn’t in his hands. Peterson’s inability to fit-in with this year’s Kansas teammates was Coach Bill Self’s fault. He erred in signing Peterson. Anyone watching the games in Round 1 and 2 this weekend saw several other talented college freshmen shining brighter while leading their teams during March Madness. Stay or go, Coach Bill Self remains the winningest coach in Kansas Jayhawks history. His 633 basketball victories plus two national titles at Kansas makes him a sure bet for basketball’s Hall of Fame. Coach Self developed heart issues of his own four years ago. He is not sure if he plans to return to Lawrence to coach the team again next year. Perhaps this season’s “heart failure” of 5-star freshman dud Darryn Peterson may have convinced the Kansas basketball coach that retirement isn’t such a bad idea after all. Former North Carolina basketball great and current coach Hubert Davis could be toast soon Another major college coach on the hot seat right now is Hubert Davis at the University of North Carolina. The current Tar Heels basketball coach was also a star guard at the school from 1988-1992. Davis became a first round NBA draft pick and played 14 seasons for six different professional teams. Hubert Davis later became a North Carolina assistant basketball coach. He was the hand-picked successor to Carolina’s long-time basketball coach Roy Williams. However, Davis just finished his fifth season in Chapel Hill with a “thud” after an ugly first round loss to Virginia Commonwealth University. VCU (a #11 seed) beat #6 North Carolina 82-78 in overtime after the Rams rallied from 19 points down in the second half to force the extra period. Like it or not, the record of Coach Hubert Davis continues to be compared against former coaches such as Dean Smith and Roy Williams. North Carolina (much like Kansas) is expected by its fans to compete for national titles. Recent teams at UNC have not been as competitive as Tar Heel Nation would like for them to be. Hubert Davis (now age 55) played for Coach Dean Smith and was a long-time assistant under his predecessor, Roy Williams. He is considered “family” at North Carolina. With a contract buyout of more than $5 million, Carolina’s well “heeled” (ha ha – get it?) benefactors can easily afford to write a final check to Coach Davis. Don’t be surprised if this happens quickly in order to find and sign a talented successor. Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope could be looking for a new job soon, too Like Hubert Davis at North Carolina, Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope was a very popular player in Lexington prior to becoming the team’s latest head coach. The 53-year old Mark Pope was captain of Kentucky’s 1996 national championship team. Expectations were sky high for Mark Pope upon his hiring just two years ago. Pope, who bleeds Big Blue blood, was welcomed to his new job at Rupp Arena in 2024 by a standing-room crowd of exuberant fans hoping for a quick turnaround of Kentucky’s basketball fortunes. Mark Pope took the job after building a successful program at Brigham Young. He was hired by his alma mater to follow a coaching legend. Former head coach John Calipari’s Kentucky teams won nearly 80% of their games over his 15 seasons in Lexington. However, the expectations at Kentucky (like at Kansas and North Carolina) are to compete for a national title every season. John Calipari won just one NCAA championship during his 15 years at Kentucky. He was released in 2024 after three straight seasons of failing to advance into the second weekend of March Madness. Coach Calipari quickly was hired by SEC rival Arkansas. For the second straight season, it will be the Arkansas Razorbacks participating in the NCAA’s second week. The University of Arkansas men will travel to San Jose to face top West region seed Arizona on Thursday night at 8:45 PM CDT on CBS. Meanwhile, Kentucky’s current basketball coach, Mark Pope, will be at home watching that game on television like the rest of us. This year’s Big Blue (22-14) was fortunate to have been given a #6 regional seed. The Wildcats were quite lucky to have prevailed 89-84 in overtime against #11 Santa Clara in the opening round. It took a miraculous half-court shot at the buzzer by guard Otega Oweh to put Kentucky into overtime in that game. Kentucky’s second round opponent was #2 Midwest seed Iowa State. The Cyclones, quite literally, extinguished Big Blew (oops, I mean Big Blue) 82-63 for Kentucky’s largest NCAA playoff loss since the year 1972. Ouch! Kentucky basketball coach Mark Pope has completed Year #2 in Lexington. Some of those same fans who filled-up Rupp Arena to welcome him back to town may be planning to put a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of his house. The post March Madness Weekend 1 – Coaching still Matters appeared first on SwampSwamiSports.com.
Get the book, The Four Cornerstones of Effective Schools: How to Build Lasting Success Visit Darin's website, www.DrDarinThompson.com Follow Darin on Youtube @drdarinthompson Follow Darin on Instagram @drdarinthompson About The Guest Darin A. Thompson, PhD, is a veteran K-12 leader with nearly 20 years of experience and founder of Pivotal Leaders Group. A two-time outstanding principal of the year semi-finalist within his region, Dr. Thompson has led transformative school improvement efforts across multiple school divisions, resulting in double-digit gains in student outcomes and significantly closing achievement gaps for historically underserved populations. A regular presenter at conferences such as NAESP/NASSP's United Conference, Making Schools Work, and VA Alliance of Black School Educators, Dr. Thompson has contributed to Education Week, the Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research, and other publications. Dr. Thompson has become a trusted voice in educational leadership. He has delivered professional development workshops on building constructive school cultures for improvement at major conferences, including the 2024 and 2025 Virginia Alliance of Black School Educators Conference, the 2025 National Association of Secondary School Principals United Conference, and the Southern Regional Education Board's Making Schools Work Conference. Dr. Thompson's thought leadership has been featured in Education Week, including the articles “How My School Is Fighting the Surge in Chronic Absenteeism” and “How Pandemic Isolation Damaged School Culture.” He has also published in the Journal of Urban Learning, Teaching, and Research and is a contributing author of Preparing to Lead: Narratives of Aspiring School Leaders in a “Post”-COVID World. Dr. Thompson earned a bachelor of science in criminal justice and a master of public administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a master of education and a doctor of philosophy in educational leadership from Regent University. He is also a proud member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. To learn more about Thompson's work, follow him on LinkedIn or at @drdarinthompson on Instagram and YouTube. This episode of Principal Center Radio is sponsored by IXL, the most widely used online learning and teaching platform for K-12. Discover the power of data-driven instruction in your school with IXL—it gives you everything you need to maximize learning, from a comprehensive curriculum to meaningful school-wide data. Visit IXL.com/center to lead your school towards data-driven excellence today.
Hello my friends and welcome to what will prove to serve as the newest installment uploaded by your favorite disc jockey on the internet. I am a deeply devastated daddy after Virginia Commonwealth University managed to upset my TarHeels in overtime. Not to mention my love life is boring me to tears. I see comments about the potential firing of Hubert Davis and to that I say shame on you. Wash your tongue with vinegar and go dig a hole somewhere. It's Hubert Davis around here foo. I could spill into the multiple reasons for my concrete stance but I won't give you that beating right now. It's FINE. My favorite portion of this episode would either be the cold slow and throw switch on the Nas 45, Boylife in EU by Yung Lean always makes me happy and honestly I believe Eternal Sunshine by Jay Electronica might be the best rap verse ever written. That's just me. Thank you as always for being here, I hope someone out there liked it. WHAT'S GOOD WITH YOU KEISHA?? Enjoy your weekend, I bought Holes on DVD today so I'll definitely be enjoying mine. Your Host with the Most,Juan Don
In this episode, host Victoria Barlow interviews Dr Brooke Newman about her recent book The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas. A story hereto relatively unknown to the public (though largely accepted in academic circles), the discussion delves into how, throughout the centuries, the British monarchy heavily invested into and greatly profited from the Atlantic Slave Trade. Dealing with such a contentious but important topic, Brooke explains why she wrote it for wider audiences, and the significance that this decision might have for the royal family. Guest bio:Dr. Brooke Newman is an Associate Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain and the British Atlantic, with a focus on slavery and its legacies. She is the author of the award-winning book, A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica (Yale, 2018), and The Crown's Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy and Slavery in the Americas (Mariner, 2026). Her writing and research have been featured in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and Smithsonian Magazine, and she has served as a historical expert for HBO's Last Week Tonight, Vox, the BBC, and NPR, among others. Follow Brooke Newman on social media: @drbrookenewman [instagram]@brookenewman.bsky.social [Bluesky]
Sharvette Mitchell, CEO of Mitchell Productions, is more than a business leader and marketing consultant; she's THE PLATFORM BUILDER®. Her vision, ingenuity, and extensive 25-year background in corporate America at Capital One Bank, coupled with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Virginia Commonwealth University, have crystallized her reputation as a foremost authority in the marketing landscape.Sharvette's unique approach, encapsulated in her trademarked framework THE PLATFORM BUILDER®, has become a beacon for small businesses seeking to amplify their brand.Sharvette has been featured in publications such as Yahoo! Finance, AARP, Huffington Post, HOPE for Women Magazine, CBNation and Sista Sense Magazine. She has authored seven book collaborations. Since 2008, her radio show “The Sharvette Mitchell Radio Show” has produced over 770+ episodes and has been a platform for marketing insights, powerful conversations, and interviews, resonating with listeners and viewers across multiple audio and live-streaming platforms.
This episode covers:A powerful conversation with Dr. Aaron Hartman, a physician who knows firsthand what it feels like when the medical system runs out of answers. His journey into functional medicine began when conventional care failed his adopted daughter... and what followed reshaped how he understands healing, diagnosis, and patient advocacy.Dr. Aaron Hartman, MD is a triple-board-certified physician and the founder of Richmond Integrative & Functional Medicine, where he combines traditional family medicine with functional, integrative, and regenerative approaches to help patients uncover and address the root causes of chronic illness. Inspired by his own family's complex health journey, he pursued advanced training beyond conventional medicine to better serve patients seeking comprehensive, personalized care.With more than two decades of clinical experience, Dr. Hartman has also served as an assistant clinical professor of family medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University and participated in numerous research initiatives. His work focuses on evidence-based, individualized treatment plans that integrate lifestyle, nutrition, and environmental insights to support long-term healing and optimal health.Links mentioned during this episode:Dr. Hartman's website: https://aaronhartmanmd.com/Dr. Hartman's book, Uncurable: https://amzn.to/3NxRf1LFree Initial Consultation with Dr. Megan: https://p.bttr.to/3a9lfYk Lyons' Share Instagram: www.instagram.com/thelyonsshareJoin Megan's newsletter: www.thelyonsshare.org/newsletter
In this episode of Bowel Sounds, hosts Drs. Amber Hildreth and Jason Silverman talk to Dr. Saul Karpen, the inaugural chief scientific officer for the Stravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Va., where he is a professor of internal medicine and adjunct professor in pediatric medicine at the VCU School of Medicine. We talk about new genetic discoveries in biliary atresia and the future goals of research on this important pediatric liver topic.Learning objectivesDescribe the pathophysiology of biliary atresia Understand the importance of early screening and new tools to assist in early detection Examine the newly discovered genetic etiology to biliary atresiaLinks:Guidance for the Primary Care Provider in Identifying Infants with Biliary Atresia by 2-4 Weeks of Life: Clinical ReportBilitool.orgLiver-Restricted Deletion of the Biliary Atresia Candidate Gene PKD1L1 Causes Bile Duct Dysmorphogenesis and CiliopathyStravitz-Sanyal Institute for Liver Disease and Metabolic HealthAASLDPrevious Episodes Mentioned:Bill Balistreri- Neonatal CholestasisJorge Bezerra- Advances in Biliary AtresiaDisclosures:Dr. Karpen has a non-reimbursed consulting relationship with Ipsen as BOLD PIDr. Hildreth serves as a consultant and speaker for IpsenSupport the showThis episode may be eligible for CME credit! Once you have listened to the episode, click this link to claim your credit. Credit is available to NASPGHAN members (if you are not a member, you should probably sign up). And thank you to the NASPGHAN Professional Education Committee for their review!As always, the discussion, views, and recommendations in this podcast are the sole responsibility of the hosts and guests and are subject to change over time with advances in the field.Check out our merch website!Follow us on Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for all the latest news and upcoming episodes.Click here to support the show.
In a world where every dollar spent is scrutinized, learning and development can no longer be seen as a low-value expenditure. In this episode, host Joe White shares why demonstrating a clear return on investment is an essential part of the learning & development strategic planning process.View this episode on the AEU website.About JoeAs Director of AEU LEAD, Joe White focuses on helping members transform operational goals into actionable plans through a structured change management process. Prior to joining AEU, Joe was a senior consultant for E.I. DuPont's consulting division, DuPont Sustainable Solutions (DSS). He joined DSS in 2011 to develop the next generation of safety practices using extensive research in behavioral sciences he's compiled over a period of nearly two decades. His efforts resulted in the development of The Risk Factor, which is now the flagship instructor-led offering for the consulting division. Combined, Joe has 26 years of operational safety experience, the majority of which was with DuPont. Joe has been published in Occupational Health & Safety Magazine for his prominent work in safety relative to behavioral and neurosciences and is an event speaker at many leading industry conferences including National Safety Council (NSC) Congress and Expos, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), and National Maritime Safety Association (NMSA). Joe is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University and has a B.S., in Safety and Risk Administration.Where you can find JoeConnect with Joe on LinkedInSupervisor Skills: Secrets of Success is a production of AEU LEAD, a division of The American Equity Underwriters, Inc. With 60 years of combined industry experience, our supervisor training program gives mid-level managers in the maritime industry the skills needed to influence employees, customers, and peers. This increases employee engagement, reduces turnover and rework, and ultimately results in higher profits for their companies. Find AEU: amequity.com | Linkedin | Facebook
In this episode, we're joined by Prof. Andrew Crislip, who is Blake Chair in the History of Christianity at Virginia Commonwealth University, and the author of Emotion in Early Christianity (published by Eerdmans). In our conversation, Prof. Crislip talks with us about what emotions really are, what early Christians thought about five key emotions, and how that thinking evolved within the first five centuries of the church. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel Adishian and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode of the PQS Quality Corner Show, hosts Kerri Musselman and Emily Endres celebrate Heart Health Month by exploring the critical link between community pharmacy, maternal health, and cardiovascular wellness. Their guest, Andrea Brookhart (Director of Population Health and Wellness at Kroger), shares her insights as both a clinical leader and a mother of twins.This episode touches on the Pharmacist as an accessible ally, the "Silent Killer" and prevention, gender differences in cardiac care, the "Mom Factor,” and self-care.Dr. Andrea Brookhart is a community pharmacist who is passionate about helping people live healthier lives. In her role, she develops and implements Kroger Health's strategy for achieving population health via value-based care. She believes community-based providers are uniquely poised to improve healthcare quality and decrease cost by delivering preventive healthcare and improving medication use.Dr. Brookhart is a graduate of the University of Toledo College of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences and of Virginia Commonwealth University's Community-based Pharmacy Residency Program a Board Certified Ambulatory Care Pharmacist.
In this episode of The Pencil Pushers Podcast, host Mike Rosado sit down with artist, writer, and creative director Will Carsola of Liquid Death to trace his path from drawing for laughs as a kid to shaping one of the boldest brands in modern marketing. Will talks about growing up mostly in Virginia, early influences like Garbage Pail Kids, and how humor became central to his voice as an artist. He shares stories of leaving Virginia Commonwealth University, bartending to get by, and spending years making DIY sketch comedy and early animation before YouTube helped his work gain traction. The conversation also covers his collaboration with Dave Stewart, pitching Adult Swim, and how a key creative shift led to the cult hit Mr. Pickles, which ran for three seasons and spawned the spinoff Mama Named Me Sheriff. Will then dives into his journey with Liquid Death, from creating the skull logo and early campaigns to becoming creative director, and discusses the brand's philosophy of making fun of marketing, the balance of edgy humor, and his creative approach: make things for the love of it, lower the pressure, and use "write-offs" to unlock great ideas. Host: Mike Rosado (mrcraleigh.com) (instagram.com/ekimodasor) Post Production: Max Trujillo (instagram.com/trujillomedia) Sponsors: MRC (mrcraleigh.com) and Burny Wild's (burnywilds.com)
From sandblasting pipe yards at 17 to advising on $10-200M M&A transactions, Dr. Greg Waller shares proven strategies for maximizing business exit value, managing buyer expectations, and why the best time to prepare for sale is 3 years before you're ready. In this episode of the DealQuest Podcast, host Corey Kupfer sits down with Dr. Greg Waller, who advises clients on complex business valuation and buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions. Greg is the managing partner of Cornerstone Valuation and a partner and managing director of Transact Capital, leading a 20-person team focused on the lower middle to middle market. Given his academic and entrepreneurial background, he jokingly refers to himself as the Blue Collar Scholar. WHAT YOU'LL LEARN: In this episode, you'll discover why professional buyers and owner-operators require completely different M&A processes, how to set realistic expectations about the gap between business value and market price, and why starting exit preparation 3 years in advance dramatically impacts final sale outcomes. Greg explains how private equity-backed platforms are blurring the traditional lines between financial and strategic buyers, what makes labor-intensive businesses particularly attractive in the current market, and the cultural complexities that emerge in international transactions. You'll also learn why the most successful exits often begin as casual conversations years before any actual sale decision. GREG'S JOURNEY: Greg's path to M&A advisory started in Youngstown, Ohio at age 17. He walked into a pipe yard with a 4-inch piece of pipe, half sandblasted and coated, half rusty. He showed the crew his before-and-after demo and landed a contract to blast the entire yard over 18 months. That first deal led to years painting elevated structural steel, bridges, water tanks, and radio transmission towers. The industry changed when EPA regulations around lead-based paint removal came in. Working on a bridge one day, a coworker with cracked hands from years of painting looked at Greg and said, "Look at my hands, look at my face. What are you doing? You're a smart boy, why don't you go back to school?" That conversation took the rest of the season to sink in, but Greg eventually left the painting business and pursued his MBA at Ohio University. Faculty members encouraged him to pursue a PhD. His initial reaction was "Are you crazy? Why would I ever want to do a PhD?" But they convinced him, and he earned his PhD in finance at Purdue University. During his 20 years in academics at Ohio University and Virginia Commonwealth University (until May 2025), Greg maintained entrepreneurial ventures including valuation work as an expert witness, real estate development, buying his father's distribution company, and building a restaurant operating group. THE BLUE COLLAR SCHOLAR: Greg's unique combination of blue-collar operations experience and academic expertise gives him a perspective most M&A advisors lack. As he puts it, "I'm as comfortable talking to the janitor as I am to a board of directors, and just being able to put yourself in those shoes and having done it really gives you a different perspective." Having been under the hood of companies across virtually every industry through ownership and valuation work, he can get into the head of sellers in ways that matter when emotions run high and expectations need managing. KEY INSIGHTS: The M&A market divides into two buyer pools requiring vastly different processes. Professional buyers (private equity and strategics) respond to structured competitive auction processes with rigorous due diligence. Owner-operators typically engage through market-making platforms where price leads the conversation. Understanding which buyer type you're targeting shapes everything about your approach. Value and price represent fundamentally different concepts. Greg uses GameStop as his example: price went through the roof despite no fundamental change to the company, then crashed. Setting realistic expectations upfront with clients about valuation ranges prevents painful surprises when market realities emerge. The critical question: "If this thing ends up pricing at the lower end of the range, are we still good to go?" The consultative approach produces the best outcomes. Greg's most successful deals were "3 or 5 years in the making" where he identified value drivers early, helped clients clean up their operations, and positioned them properly before market entry. The best time to start thinking about hitting the market is 3 years ago. Private equity-backed platforms now dominate middle-market transactions, acting like strategics by bolting on competitors but bringing institutional capital discipline. This hybrid model has made the traditional financial versus strategic buyer distinction increasingly blurry. Labor-intensive businesses with skilled workforces are commanding premium multiples as immigration policies create labor challenges. Service providers to infrastructure industries and staffing companies are particularly hot. With massive private equity dry powder and 2024's weak M&A activity, the ingredients point toward a robust 2026 market. Perfect for business owners planning exits in the next 3-5 years, entrepreneurs considering M&A advisory relationships, and anyone interested in understanding how blue-collar operations experience combined with academic expertise creates differentiated advisory value. FOR MORE ON THIS EPISODE: https://www.coreykupfer.com/blog/gregwaller FOR MORE ON GREG WALLER:https://www.linkedin.com/in/h-gregory-waller-7193bb60/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573615328301 FOR MORE ON COREY KUPFER https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/ https://www.coreykupfer.com/ Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker. He has more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker. He is deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is also the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Get deal-ready with the DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer, where like-minded entrepreneurs and business leaders converge, share insights and challenges, and success stories. Equip yourself with the tools, resources, and support necessary to navigate the complex yet rewarding world of dealmaking. Dive into the world of deal-driven growth today! Episode Highlights with Timestamps [00:12:39] - Introduction: Greg Waller's credentials and Blue Collar Scholar background [00:16:32] - First deal at 17: Landing the pipe yard sandblasting contract [00:20:04] - The bridge painter who told him to go back to school and career transformation [00:29:05] - How blue-collar and academic backgrounds create unique M&A advisory perspective [00:30:48] - Two buyer pools: Professional buyers versus owner-operators and their different processes [00:35:57] - Value versus price conversation and the GameStop example [00:47:05] - "The best time to start thinking about hitting the market is 3 years ago" [00:48:21] - Why the line between financial and strategic buyers is increasingly blurry [00:50:15] - International deal complexities and cultural differences [00:54:19] - Market outlook for 2026: Labor challenges driving premium multiples [00:57:40] - What freedom means: Clean conscience and ability to chart your own destiny Guest Bio Dr. Greg Waller advises clients on complex business valuation and buy-side and sell-side M&A transactions. He is the managing partner of Cornerstone Valuation and a partner and managing director of Transact Capital, leading a 20-person team focused on the lower middle to middle market ($10-200M enterprise value range). His key industry verticals include human resource companies, staffing, industrials and infrastructure, healthcare, technology, and consumer products. Greg holds a PhD in finance from Purdue University and, until May 2025, was a tenured professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he taught courses and published research on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance. He previously taught at Ohio University. Greg is the son of a blue-collar entrepreneur and owned and operated an industrial painting company specializing in elevated structural steel infrastructure before pursuing his academic career. He has also been a partner in a real estate development firm and restaurant operating group, and now owns his family's industrial painting equipment distribution company. Given his academic and entrepreneurial background, he jokingly refers to himself as the Blue Collar Scholar. Host Bio Corey Kupfer is an expert strategist, negotiator, and dealmaker with more than 35 years of professional deal-making and negotiating experience. Corey is a successful entrepreneur, attorney, consultant, author, and professional speaker deeply passionate about deal-driven growth. He is the creator and host of the DealQuest Podcast. Show Description Do you want your business to grow faster? The DealQuest Podcast with Corey Kupfer reveals how successful entrepreneurs and business leaders use strategic deals to accelerate growth. From large mergers and acquisitions to capital raising, joint ventures, strategic alliances, real estate deals, and more, this show discusses the full spectrum of deal-driven growth strategies. Get the confidence to pursue deals that will help your company scale faster. Related Episodes Episode 350 - Tom Dillon: Understanding Business Valuation and Exit Planning Realities Episode 325 - Kelly Finnell: Using ESOPs in Ownership Succession Planning Episode 330 - Pete Mohr: Building Enterprise Value and Exit Readiness Episode 339 - Solocast 74: Equitizing Key Employees and Succession Planning Strategies Follow DealQuest Podcast: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreykupfer/ Website: https://www.coreykupfer.com/ Follow Greg Waller:https://www.linkedin.com/in/h-gregory-waller-7193bb60/https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573615328301 Keywords/TagsM&A advisory, business valuation, exit planning, sell-side advisory, lower middle market, professional buyers, strategic buyers, private equity, business sale preparation, enterprise value, Blue Collar Scholar, deal structuring, owner-operators, business exit strategy, middle market M&A, exit readiness, business succession planning, international M&A, cross-border transactions, 2026 market outlook
Superpowers for Good should not be considered investment advice. Seek counsel before making investment decisions. When you purchase an item, launch a campaign or create an investment account after clicking a link here, we may earn a fee. Engage to support our work.Watch the show on television by downloading the e360tv channel app to your Roku, LG or AmazonFireTV. You can also see it on YouTube.Devin: What is your superpower?Sanjana: Connecting the dots.Technology is often seen as a solution to the world's biggest challenges, but it can also be a source of harm. In today's episode, Sanjana Paul, the Executive Director of Rooted Futures Lab, shared how her organization is bridging the gap between technology and environmental justice to create a more equitable and sustainable future.Sanjana explained that environmental justice, as a concept, ensures equal protection from environmental harm, regardless of income, race, or geography. She shared a disturbing insight from Dr. Robert Bullard's research: low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately burdened by pollution and environmental hazards. “A kid anywhere in the world should be able to breathe and not be breathing in pollution,” Sanjana said.Rooted Futures Lab is tackling this challenge by merging education, research, and action. A key initiative involves hosting environmental hackathons, where young scientists and engineers learn to develop technologies with environmental awareness at their core. “We see hackathons as a fun and community-centric way to introduce hands-on environmental education,” she explained. These events inspire the next generation of engineers to think critically about the environmental impact of their innovations.The organization also collaborates with students and researchers to reimagine technologies like refrigeration systems through workshops that focus on reducing environmental harm. Additionally, they are conducting research on digital infrastructure, such as data centers, to analyze their environmental impact and propose sustainable alternatives.“We should be trying to be better engineers,” Sanjana emphasized. “How can we build transit systems that get us from one place to another without giving a kid asthma?” Her work highlights how technology, when approached thoughtfully, can be used to address systemic inequities and reduce environmental harm.By focusing on educating future engineers, conducting groundbreaking research, and fostering collective action, Sanjana and Rooted Futures Lab are paving the way for a greener, fairer future.tl;dr:Sanjana Paul defines environmental justice and explains its connection to technology and systemic inequities.Rooted Futures Lab educates young engineers through hackathons to foster environmentally conscious innovation.Sanjana highlights key projects, including research on digital infrastructure and sustainable design workshops.She shares how her superpower, connecting the dots, enables her to bridge fields for positive impact.Sanjana encourages collaboration, curiosity, and deep thinking to address environmental challenges effectively.How to Develop Connecting the Dots As a SuperpowerSanjana describes her superpower as “connecting the dots.” She shared how her diverse background in electrical engineering, environmental science, and energy policy allows her to see links between seemingly unrelated fields. “These dots may not seem like they connect, but they really do to me,” Sanjana said. Her ability to uncover these connections enables her to address complex challenges, like bridging environmental justice and technology, with a holistic approach.Sanjana's work at Rooted Futures Lab exemplifies her superpower. While working in atmospheric sensing, she observed the devastating impacts of extreme weather events and pollution. This inspired her to connect environmental justice with technology, leading to the creation of Rooted Futures Lab. The organization now focuses on educating engineers about the environmental impacts of technology, hosting hackathons, and reimagining infrastructure to align with environmental justice principles.Tips for Developing the Superpower:Be Curious: Treat every moment as an opportunity to learn or teach.Think Holistically: Look for connections between seemingly unrelated fields or ideas.Engage with Others: Work collaboratively in a community to tackle complex problems.Slow Down: Take time to reflect on root causes instead of reacting to immediate issues.Learn from Experts: Seek knowledge from those working in areas you want to understand better.By following Sanjana's example and advice, you can make connecting the dots a skill. With practice and effort, you could make it a superpower that enables you to do more good in the world.Remember, however, that research into success suggests that building on your own superpowers is more important than creating new ones or overcoming weaknesses. You do you!Get Your Copy!Guest ProfileSanjana Paul (she/her):Executive Director, Rooted Futures LabAbout Rooted Futures Lab: Rooted Futures Lab advances environmental justice in technology through education, research, and action. We support communities and advocates contesting digital infrastructure's environmental and social impacts through accessible tools, public scholarship, and organizing resources.Website: rootedfutureslab.ioLinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/company/rooted-futures-labBiographical Information: Sanjana Paul is an engineer, environmental justice researcher, and systems thinker working at the intersection of infrastructure, climate, and technology. She is a PhD student at MIT, where her research focuses on renewable energy, energy justice, and the electric grid. She is the co-founder and Executive Director of Rooted Futures Lab, a research and action collective advancing environmental justice in technology, and the co-founder of Earth Hacks, a nonprofit that uses hackathons as a form of climate action and public learning. Her work has ranged from atmospheric science software engineering at NASA to passing decarbonization policy at the local level. She holds a BS in electrical engineering and physics from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Master's in City Planning from MIT.LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/sanjana-paul-79081a111The Super Crowd, Inc., a public benefit corporation, is proud to have been named a finalist in the media category of the impact-focused, global Bold Awards.Support Our SponsorsOur generous sponsors make our work possible, serving impact investors, social entrepreneurs, community builders and diverse founders. Today's advertisers include rHealth, and Make Money with Impact Crowdfunding. Learn more about advertising with us here.Max-Impact Members(We're grateful for every one of these community champions who make this work possible.)Brian Christie, Brainsy | Cameron Neil, Lend For Good | Carol Fineagan, Independent Consultant | Hiten Sonpal, RISE Robotics | John Berlet, CORE Tax Deeds, LLC. | Justin Starbird, The Aebli Group | Lory Moore, Lory Moore Law | Mark Grimes, Networked Enterprise Development | Matthew Mead, Hempitecture | Michael Pratt, Qnetic | Mike Green, Envirosult | Nick Degnan, Unlimit Ventures | Dr. Nicole Paulk, Siren Biotechnology | Paul Lovejoy, Stakeholder Enterprise | Pearl Wright, Global Changemaker | Scott Thorpe, Philanthropist | Sharon Samjitsingh, Health Care Originals | Add Your Name HereUpcoming SuperCrowd Event CalendarIf a location is not noted, the events below are virtual.SuperCrowd Impact Member Networking Session: Impact (and, of course, Max-Impact) Members of the SuperCrowd are invited to a private networking session on February 17th at 1:30 PM ET/10:30 AM PT. Mark your calendar. We'll send private emails to Impact Members with registration details. Upgrade to Impact Membership today!SuperCrowdHour February: This month, Devin Thorpe will be digging deep into my core finance expertise to share guidance on projections and financial statements. We're calling it “Show Me the Numbers: Building Trust with Financial Clarity.” Register free to get all the details. February 18th at Noon ET/9:00 PT.Superpowers for Good Live Pitch: The top-raising Reg CF campaign of 2025 won the June 2025 Superpowers for Good Live Pitch. We're taking applications for the March 17, 2026, Live Pitch now. There is no fee to apply and no fee to pitch if selected! Apply here now!Community Event CalendarSuccessful Funding with Karl Dakin, Tuesdays at 10:00 AM ET - Click on Events.If you would like to submit an event for us to share with the 10,000+ changemakers, investors and entrepreneurs who are members of the SuperCrowd, click here.Manage the volume of emails you receive from us by clicking here.We use AI to help us write compelling recaps of each episode. Get full access to Superpowers for Good at www.superpowers4good.com/subscribe
Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Vitiello.Stephen is an electronic musician and media artist. His sound installations are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. He's worked with Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Joan Jonas. By day, he teaches Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.Stephen's latest project is Trinity, a collaborative album with Lawrence English, who you heard on last week's show. Each of Trinity's five tracks brings in a different third musician: Brendan Canty from Fugazi, Chris Abrahams from The Necks, Marina Rosenfeld, Aki Onda, and the late Steve Roden. The album came out last November.Stephen shares how this project came together, what it's like to work with each of these artists, and how he's built a career turning everyday sounds into sonic experiences.(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello's album Trinity)–Dig DeeperArtist and AlbumVisit Stephen Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com and follow him on Soundcloud, Instagram, and BandcampPurchase Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello's Trinity from American Dreams, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choicePrevious collaborations: Acute Inbetweens (2011) and Fable (2014) with Lawrence EnglishStephen Vitiello & Brendan Canty: Second (with Hahn Rowe)Trinity CollaboratorsLawrence English and Room40 RecordsBrendan Canty - drummer (Fugazi, The Messthetics)Chris Abrahams - pianist (The Necks)Marina Rosenfeld - turntablist and composerAki Onda - electronic musician and sound artistSteve Roden - late sound artist and visual artistWorld Trade Center ProjectWorld Trade Center Artist Residency - Lower Manhattan Cultural CouncilWorld Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999)Bright and Dusty Things - album featuring WTC recordingsStephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent - documentary by ABC-TV AustraliaEducational InstitutionVCU Kinetic Imaging - Virginia Commonwealth UniversityKinetic Imaging Graduate Program at VCUInfluences and Collaborators MentionedNam June Paik - video art pioneerPauline Oliveros - composer and accordionistRyuichi Sakamoto - composer and musicianFred Frith - guitarist and composerIkue Mori - drummer and electronic musician (DNA)Maryanne Amacher - sound artist and composerR. Murray Schafer - composer and writer on acoustic ecologyRobin Rimbaud (Scanner) - electronic musicianColin Newman - Wire guitarist and vocalistTaylor Deupree - 12k Records founderKey Venues and InstitutionsThe Kitchen - New York performance spaceElectronic Arts Intermix - video art distributorAnthology Film Archives - New York cinemaMASS MoCA - Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary ArtThe High Line - New York elevated parkWhitney Museum of American Art - 2002 BiennialMuseum of Modern Art - Soundings exhibition (2013)Punk and No Wave ReferencesFugazi - influential post-hardcore bandDNA - no wave bandThe ClashNo Wave movement - late 1970s NYCMusic Theory and PracticeFluxus movement - experimental art movementJohn Cage and prepared pianoAmbisonic audio - spatial sound formatDolby Atmos - immersive audio formatArticles and InterviewsSteve Roden and Stephen Vitiello conversation in Bomb magazineThe Collaborative Recent History of Stephen Vitiello - Fluid Radio interview-Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com–• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate The Tonearm ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. • Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of The Tonearm in your podcast app of choice. • Looking for more? Visit podcast.thetonearm.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Talk Of The Tonearm email newsletter. You can also follow us on Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and LinkedIn. • Be sure to bookmark our online magazine, The Tonearm! → thetonearm.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today, we're putting The Tonearm's needle on Stephen Vitiello.Stephen is an electronic musician and media artist. His sound installations are in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon. He's worked with Pauline Oliveros, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Joan Jonas. By day, he teaches Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University.Stephen's latest project is Trinity, a collaborative album with Lawrence English, who you heard on last week's show. Each of Trinity's five tracks brings in a different third musician: Brendan Canty from Fugazi, Chris Abrahams from The Necks, Marina Rosenfeld, Aki Onda, and the late Steve Roden. The album came out last November.Stephen shares how this project came together, what it's like to work with each of these artists, and how he's built a career turning everyday sounds into sonic experiences.(The musical excerpts heard in the interview are from Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello's album Trinity)–Dig DeeperArtist and AlbumVisit Stephen Vitiello at stephenvitiello.com and follow him on Soundcloud, Instagram, and BandcampPurchase Lawrence English & Stephen Vitiello's Trinity from American Dreams, Bandcamp, or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choicePrevious collaborations: Acute Inbetweens (2011) and Fable (2014) with Lawrence EnglishStephen Vitiello & Brendan Canty: Second (with Hahn Rowe)Trinity CollaboratorsLawrence English and Room40 RecordsBrendan Canty - drummer (Fugazi, The Messthetics)Chris Abrahams - pianist (The Necks)Marina Rosenfeld - turntablist and composerAki Onda - electronic musician and sound artistSteve Roden - late sound artist and visual artistWorld Trade Center ProjectWorld Trade Center Artist Residency - Lower Manhattan Cultural CouncilWorld Trade Center Recordings: Winds After Hurricane Floyd (1999)Bright and Dusty Things - album featuring WTC recordingsStephen Vitiello: Listening With Intent - documentary by ABC-TV AustraliaEducational InstitutionVCU Kinetic Imaging - Virginia Commonwealth UniversityKinetic Imaging Graduate Program at VCUInfluences and Collaborators MentionedNam June Paik - video art pioneerPauline Oliveros - composer and accordionistRyuichi Sakamoto - composer and musicianFred Frith - guitarist and composerIkue Mori - drummer and electronic musician (DNA)Maryanne Amacher - sound artist and composerR. Murray Schafer - composer and writer on acoustic ecologyRobin Rimbaud (Scanner) - electronic musicianColin Newman - Wire guitarist and vocalistTaylor Deupree - 12k Records founderKey Venues and InstitutionsThe Kitchen - New York performance spaceElectronic Arts Intermix - video art distributorAnthology Film Archives - New York cinemaMASS MoCA - Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary ArtThe High Line - New York elevated parkWhitney Museum of American Art - 2002 BiennialMuseum of Modern Art - Soundings exhibition (2013)Punk and No Wave ReferencesFugazi - influential post-hardcore bandDNA - no wave bandThe ClashNo Wave movement - late 1970s NYCMusic Theory and PracticeFluxus movement - experimental art movementJohn Cage and prepared pianoAmbisonic audio - spatial sound formatDolby Atmos - immersive audio formatArticles and InterviewsSteve Roden and Stephen Vitiello conversation in Bomb magazineThe Collaborative Recent History of Stephen Vitiello - Fluid Radio interview-Dig into this episode's complete show notes at podcast.thetonearm.com–• Did you enjoy this episode? Please share it with a friend! You can also rate The Tonearm ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. • Subscribe! Be the first to check out each new episode of The Tonearm in your podcast app of choice. • Looking for more? Visit podcast.thetonearm.com for bonus content, web-only interviews + features, and the Talk Of The Tonearm email newsletter. You can also follow us on Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, and LinkedIn. • Be sure to bookmark our online magazine, The Tonearm! → thetonearm.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Today's episode is a deep dive into tactile defensiveness and sensory distress, especially around clothing. My guest is Kathryn Hamlin-Pacheco, an occupational therapist who helps kids and families understand their brains and bodies through everyday neuroscience. Kathryn will break down what's actually happening in the brain and nervous system when children experience tactile defensiveness, and why clothing can feel so overwhelming for some kids. We talk about the role of co-regulation, how parents can help create positive associations with getting dressed, and practical strategies for supporting children in navigating their sensory experiences with more safety and less stress. This episode is a grounding, compassionate look at sensory processing—and a reminder that when we understand what's underneath the behavior, everything shifts. About Kathryn Hamlin-Pacheco Kathryn (Katie) Hamlin-Pacheco, M.S., OTR/L, ASDCS, is an occupational therapist, former teacher, author, and founder of the Brain Executive Program. Kathryn is an Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinical Specialist (ASDCS) and holds certifications in Neuroscience for Mental Health Professionals and in Brain Structure and Function: Application to Sensory Integration and Processing. She graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy, where she also worked with the Virginia Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities program to pursue her desire to be an advocate and leader in pediatric healthcare. She has shared her work at AOTA's Inspire Conference (the world's largest gathering of occupational therapy practitioners!), Sensory Integration Education's international conference, and at William & Mary's Center for Gifted Education. In addition, Katie has written for OT Practice Magazine, Autism Parenting Magazine, Washington Family Magazine, and Stars & Stripes Magazine. Her book, How to Be a Brain Executive: And Get Sensory Sharp!, was a top Amazon release in two categories. Things you'll learn from this episode How tactile defensiveness reflects a nervous system response rather than behavioral resistance Why understanding sensory processing is essential for supporting children with clothing challenges How co-regulation helps children feel safe, connected, and more able to tolerate sensory input Why play and low-pressure practice can make clothing experiences more manageable How creating calm environments and positive associations supports sensory integration over time Why sensory health is a vital part of children's overall well-being Resources mentioned Brain Executive Program (Kathryn Hamlin-Pacheco's website) Kathryn's online Sensory Dressing Course How to Be a Brain Executive: And Get Sensory Sharp! by Kathryn Hamlin-Pacheco Brain Executive Program on Instagram Brain Executive Program on Facebook Deb Dana on Befriending Our Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory (Tilt Parenting podcast) Dr. Stephen Porges & Karen Onderko on the Safe and Sound Protocol (Tilt Parenting podcast) Dr. Mona Delahooke on the Power of Brain-Body Parenting (Tilt Parenting podcast) Brain-Body Parenting: How to Stop Managing Behavior and Start Raising Joyful, Resilient Kids by Dr. Mona Delahooke Sensory Processing Differences with Carol Kranowitz (Tilt Parenting podcast) The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Processing Differences by Carol Kranowitz Polyvagal Card Deck: 58 Practices for Calm & Change Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety by Deb Dana Debbie's TedxBerlin talk: What if Feeling Broken Wasn't the End of the Story? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Send us a textPharmacology & neurobiology of psychedelics & MDMA, focusing on isomers, sex-specific effects, and mechanisms in animal models. Not medical advice.TOPICS DISCUSSED:Biased agonism: Different drugs activate the same receptor (e.g., 5-HT2A) but trigger varied intracellular pathways, explaining why LSD is psychedelic while similar lisuride is not.Enantiomers & isomers: Mirror-image versions of drugs like MDMA (S and R forms) and LSD (four isomers) often produce distinct effects; only one LSD isomer is psychedelic, for example.MDMA isomer effects: S-MDMA induces stronger head twitches (psychedelic proxy) via serotonin release, and increases dendritic spines in male mice but not females; R-MDMA has somewhat different effects.Sex-specific drug responses: In mice, females show stronger psychedelic effects (head twitches) from psilocybin and DOI at the same dose, but males exhibit greater post-acute benefits like reduced opioid withdrawal.Psilocybin in opioid addiction models: A single dose reduces place preference for oxycodone and withdrawal symptoms in male mice more than females, with opposite spine density effects in reward-related brain areas.Mechanisms beyond 5-HT2A: Psychedelics involve other receptors like metabotropic glutamate receptors, forming dimers with 5-HT2A to enable dual signaling pathways; effects in subcortical regions like nucleus accumbens are 5-HT2A-independent.Clinical implications: Street MDMA may vary in S/R ratios, affecting experiences; clinical trials often use racemic mixtures without weight-adjusted dosing, potentially missing sex differences.ABOUT THE GUEST: Javier Gonzalez-Maeso, PhD is a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Virginia Commonwealth University, with a PhD in medicine from Spain focused on G-protein coupled receptors and human brain studies in depression and addiction.RELATED EPISODE:M&M 230 | Psilocybin & MDMA: Inflammation, Stress & Brain-Body Communication | Michael WheelerSupport the showHealth Products by M&M Partners: SporesMD: Premium mushrooms products (gourmet mushrooms, nootropics, research). Use code 'nickjikomes' for 20% off. Lumen device: Optimize your metabolism for weight loss or athletic performance. MINDMATTER gets you 15% off. AquaTru: Water filtration devices that remove microplastics, metals, bacteria, and more from your drinking water. Through link, $100 off AquaTru Carafe, Classic & Under Sink Units; $300 off Freestanding models. Seed Oil Scout: Find restaurants with seed oil-free options, scan food products to see what they're hiding, with this easy-to-use mobile app. KetoCitra—Ketone body BHB + electrolytes formulated for kidney health. Use code MIND20 for 20% off any subscription (cancel anytime) For all the ways you can support my efforts
In this episode, we're talking with Dr. Alaina Holt and Dr. Michelle Peace from the Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology Research about the importance of relationships within research, what they are seeing in the e-cigarette and cannabis product markets right now, the importance of sharing their findings with the community, and the role we all have to play in keeping our communities safe, healthy, and informed. Referenced Resources: VCU Department of Forensic Science: https://forensicscience.vcu.edu/ VCU Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology Research: https://blogs.vcu.edu/mrpeace/ LFTR Research Materials: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rndBDBH8N5Ie18HM0JqT_wJ4NhKNdaR7?usp=sharing Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth: https://vfhy.org/ Dr. Peace is a forensic toxicologist and a Full Professor in the Department of Forensic Science at VCU. She is one of the founding faculty for the Department and served as Associate Chair and Chair for nearly a decade. Dr. Peace has also served as a manager in a private forensic drug testing laboratory and has worked as a scientist for Procter & Gamble, where she holds 3 patents. Dr. Peace has been funded by the National Institute of Justice to study the efficacy of electronic cigarettes, particularly as they pertain to substance use and abuse. Dr. Peace serves on the Board for Virginia's Cannabis Control Authority, is a Past President of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists, is a member of The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists and is a Fellow in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. She is a member of the National Safety Council's Alcohol, Drugs, and Impairment Division. Dr. Holt is a forensic toxicologist and an Associate Research Faculty member in the Department of Forensic Science at Virginia Commonwealth University. She works within the Laboratory for Forensic Toxicology research where she assists students, maintains instrumentation, and completes casework. Her current research includes characterizing vaping products confiscated from Virginia school students; characterizing cannabis and cannabinoid-products for quality and labeling accuracy; assessing impacts of vaping on alcohol impairment evaluations; and evaluating novel treatments for opioid overdoses. Dr. Holt is an active member of the Society of Forensic Toxicologists, The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, the International Association of Chemical Testing, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Dr. Holt is also a member of the National Safety Council's Alcohol, Drugs, and Impairment Division. The views and opinions expressed on Awareness 2 Action are those of the guests and host and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Prevention Department or Northwestern Community Services.
Episode 513 / Langdon GravesLangdon Graves is a Virginia-born, New York City-based artist who holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Painting & Printmaking and an MFA from Parsons School of Design. She is adjunct faculty at Parsons and Assistant Professor in the Graduate Fine Arts program at Pratt Institute. Langdon has shown her work throughout the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia with solo and group exhibitions that include Dinner Gallery, TEI's Art in Buildings, Mrs., Tilton Gallery, Deanna Evans Projects, Grimm, Taymour Grahne Projects, STONELEAF and the Delaware Contemporary Museum. Langdon has attended the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, the Kunstenaarsinitiatief Residency and Exhibition Program in the Netherlands, the Object Limited residency in Bisbee, Arizona and STONELEAF Retreat in upstate New York. She is a recipient of Canson & Beautiful Decay's Wet Paint Grant and has been featured in Artnet, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Vice Creators Project, Juxtapoz, Art F City, The Wall Street Journal, the Artmatters podcast and Madeline Schwartzman's See Yourself X.
#683: Candy now — or a toy later? You slide play money across the table and let your kid choose. That moment kicks off this episode, where Dr. Stephen Day joins us to talk about building a “mini economy” at home. Dr. Day is the director of the Center for Economic Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. He also holds a PhD in social studies and economics curriculum and instruction. His work looks at how kids form money habits long before they deal with real paychecks, budgets, or credit cards. We break down how a mini economy actually works. Kids have job titles tied to age-appropriate chores. They earn play money. They spend it at a small household store set up on the kitchen table. The store might sell candy, small toys, or privileges like extra screen time. Parents set the prices. Kids decide whether to spend right away or save for something bigger. You hear how this plays out inside Day's own house. A three-year-old takes on the role of “zookeeper,” feeding the cat and picking up stuffed animals. A seven-year-old creates a weekly plan that alternates spending and saving, using patterns she learns at school. A five-year-old chooses to donate part of his earnings instead of spending anything. The system stays the same. The choices vary by kid. The conversation moves through childhood stage by stage. Early years center on routine, structure, and basic trade-offs. Elementary school becomes the key period for practice, when habits and norms take shape. Middle and high school bring longer planning timelines, more independence, and deeper conversations about work, contribution, and goals. We also dig into questions parents ask all the time. Should kids get paid for chores, or should chores come with living in the house? Day explains how families can separate family work, paid jobs, and service work so kids understand why they are doing each task. Clear categories help avoid confusion about motivation and responsibility. Busy schedules come up, too. Sports practices, travel, school events, and late workdays often knock chore systems off track. Day explains how vague expectations create conflict and why job titles and defined duties bring structure even during chaotic weeks. Throughout the episode, the focus stays on practice, not lectures. Kids do not learn money by hearing explanations. They learn by earning, choosing, saving, spending, and living with trade-offs — all inside a system small enough to fit on a kitchen table. Resource: EconEdLink, a CEE program https://econedlink.org Timestamps: Note: Timestamps will vary on individual listening devices based on dynamic advertising run times. The provided timestamps are approximate and may be several minutes off due to changing ad lengths. (00:00) Intro (02:00) Teaching kids money (03:59) Mini economy basics (06:20) Money skills by stages (10:41) Starting at age three (12:02) Cat job example (16:08) Goods versus privileges (17:27) Bugging versus choices (18:11) Paying for chores (20:22) Family job service (24:56) Busy weeks and chores (33:21) Low-consumption kid example (39:17) Shared jobs and teamwork (43:34) Exchange rate to dollars (1:00:28) Investing, 529, compound interest Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pediatric neuropalliative medicine is an emerging area of subspecialty practice that emphasizes the human experience elements of serious neurologic illness. Child neurologists care daily for patients who can benefit from the communication strategies and management practices central to pediatric neuropalliative medicine, whether at the primary or subspecialty level. In this episode, Gordon Smith, MD, FAAN, speaks with Lauren Treat, MD, author of the article "Neuropalliative Medicine in Pediatric Neurology" in the Continuum® December 2025 Neuropalliative Care issue. Dr. Smith is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a professor and chair of neurology at Kenneth and Dianne Wright Distinguished Chair in Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Treat is an associate professor in the divisions of child neurology and palliative medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colorado. Additional Resources Read the article: Neuropalliative Medicine in Pediatric Neurology Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @gordonsmithMD Full episode transcript available here Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast. Dr Smith: This is Gordon Smith. Today I've got the great pleasure of interviewing my good friend Dr Lauren Treat about her article on neuropalliative medicine in pediatric neurology practice. This article appears in the December 2025 Continuum issue on neuropalliative care. Lauren, welcome to the Continuum podcast, and maybe you can introduce yourself to our listeners. Dr Treat: Such a delight to be here, Gordon. Thank you. I am a pediatric neurologist and palliative medicine doctor at the University of Colorado, Children's Hospital Colorado, and I am practicing in both areas. I do general child neurology, and I also run a pediatric neuropalliative medicine clinic. So, I'm happy to be here to talk about it. Dr Smith: And, truth in advertising, I tried very hard to get Dr Treat to move to VC to work with me. And I haven't given up yet. I'm looking forward to the conversation. And Lauren, I wonder- one, I'm really excited about this issue, by the way. This is the second podcast I've done. And I'd like to ask the same question I asked of David Oliver, who's amazing. What a great article and conversation we had. And that question is, can you define palliative care? I think a lot of people think of it as, like, end-of-life care or things like that. And is the definition a little different in the pediatric space than it is in the adult space? Dr Treat: Such a great place to start, Gordon. I absolutely think that there are nuances that are very important in pediatrics. And we especially acknowledge in pediatrics that there is a very longitudinal component of this. And even moreso, I think, then in adult neuropalliative medicine, in pediatrics, we are seeing people=even prenatally or early in their first hours and days of life, and walking with them on a journey that might last days or weeks, but might last years or decades. And so, there is this sense that we are going to come alongside them and be part of the ups and the downs. So yes, neuropalliative medicine is a kind of medicine that is a very natural partner to where neurology is in its current field. We're doing a lot of exciting things with modifying diseases, diagnosing things early, and we have a very high reliance on the things that we can measure in medicine. And not all things can be measured that are worthwhile about one's quality of life. A family very poignantly told me very recently, making sure someone stays alive is different from making sure they have a life. And that's what neuropalliative medicine is about. Dr Smith: Well, great summary, and I definitely want to follow up on several aspects of that, but there's one point I was really curious about as I've been thinking about this, you know, these are really exciting times and neurology in general and in child neurology in particular. And we've got all of these exciting new therapies. And as you know, I'm a neuromuscular person, so it's hard not to think back on SMA and not be super excited. And so, I wonder about the impact of these positive developments on the practice of neuropalliative care in kids. You know, I'm just thinking, you know, you mentioned it's a journey with ups and downs. And I wonder, the complexity of that must be really interesting. And I bet your job looks different now than it did seven or eight years ago. Dr Treat: That's absolutely true. I will self-reference here one of the figures in the paper. Figure 2 in my section is about those trajectories, about how these journeys can have lots of ups and downs and whether this person had a normal health status to begin with or whether they started out life with a lot of challenges. Those ups and downs inherently involve a lot of uncertainty. And that's where palliative medicine shines. Not because we have the answer---everyone would love for us to have the answer---but because we consider ourselves uncertainty specialists in the way that we have to figure out what do we know, what can we ground ourselves in, and how can we continue to move forward even if we don't have all the answers? That is a particular aspect of neurology that is incredibly challenging for families and clinicians, and it can't stand as a barrier to moving forward and trying to figure out what's best for this child, what's best for this family. What do we know to be true about them as people, and how can we integrate that with all of the quantitative measures that we know and love in neurology? Dr Smith: So, I love the comment about prognostication, and this really ties into positive uncertainty or negative undercertainty in terms of therapeutic development. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about your approach to prognostication, particularly in a highly fluid situation. And are there pearls and pitfalls that our listeners should consider when they're discussing prognosis for children, particularly maybe young children who have severe neurological problems? Dr Treat: It's such a pivotal issue, a central issue, to child neurology practice. Again, because we are often meeting people very, very early on in their journey---earlier than we ever have before, sometimes, because of this opportunity to have a diagnosis, you know, prenatally or genetically or whatever else it is---sometimes we are seeing the very early signs of something as compared to previously where we wouldn't have a diagnosis until something was in its more kind of full-blown state. This idea of having a spectrum and giving people the range of possible outcomes is absolutely still what we need to do. However, we need to add on another skill on top of that in helping people anchor into what feels like the most likely situation and what the milestones are going to be in the near future, about how we're going to walk this journey and what we'll be on the lookout for that will help us branch into those different areas of the map down the road. Dr Smith: So, I wonder if we can go back to the framework you mentioned, two answers ago, I think? You and the article, you know, provide four different types of situations kind of based on temporal progression. I wonder if maybe the best way of approaching is to give an example and how that impacts your thoughts of how you manage a particular situation. Dr Treat: Absolutely. So, this figure in particular is helpful in multiple ways. One is to just give a visual of what these disease trajectories are doing, because we're doing that when and we take a history from a patient. But actually, to put it into an external visual for yourself, for your team, but also perhaps for the family can be really powerful. It helps you contextualize the episode of care in which you're meeting the family right now. And it also helps, sometimes, provide some sense of alignment or point out some discrepancies about how you're viewing that child's health and quality of life as compared to how the family might be viewing it. And so, if you say, you know, it sounds like during those five years before we met, you were up here, and now we find ourselves down here, and we're kind of in the middle of the range of where I've seen this person's health status be. Do I have that right? Families feel really seen when you do that and when you can get it accurately. And it also invites a dialogue between the two parties to be able to say, well, maybe I would adjust this. I think we had good health or good quality of life in this season. But you're right, it's getting harder. It's kind of that "show, don't tell" approach of bringing together all the facts to put together the relative position of where we are now in the context of everything they've been through. Dr Smith: You know, I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the differences between palliative care and adult patients and in children? Dr Treat: Absolutely. One of the key features in pediatrics is this kind of overriding sense of an out-of-order event in the family's life. Children are not supposed to have illness. Children are not supposed to have disability. Children are not supposed to die before their parents. And that layer of tragedy is incredibly heavy and pervasive. It's not every encounter that you have in child neurology, but it does kind of permeate some of the conversations that neurologists have with their patients, especially patients who have serious neurological disease. So that could be things like epileptic encephalopathies, birth injuries, other traumatic brain injuries down the line. In the paper, I'd go through many different categories of the types of conditions that are eligible for pediatric neuropalliative medicine, that kind of support. When we think about that layer of tragedy in the relation to where we're meeting these families, they deserve extra support, not just to think about the medicines and the treatments, but also, what can we hope for? How can we give this child the best possible life in whatever circumstance that they're in? How can we show up in whatever medical decision-making circumstances present themselves to us and feel like we've done right by this child? It's a complex task, and pediatric neural palliative medicine is evolving to be able to be in those spaces with families in a very meaningful way. Dr Smith: So, of course, one of the differences is the, you know, very important role of parents in the situation, right? Obviously, parents are involved in adult palliative care issues and family is very important. But I wonder if you can talk about specific considerations given the parent-child relationship? Dr Treat: So, pediatric neuropalliative medicine really helps facilitate discussions not just about, again, those things that we have data on, but also about what is meaningful and foundational for those families. What's possible at home, what's possible in the community. In pediatrics, parents are making decisions on behalf of their child, often as a dyad, and I don't think this gets enough attention. We know from adult literature that making decisions on behalf of someone else is different from making decisions on behalf of oneself. We call this proxy decision-making. And proxies are more likely to be conservative on behalf of someone else than they are on behalf of themselves, and they're also more likely to overestimate the tolerability of a medical intervention. So, they might say, I wouldn't want this, or, I wouldn't accept this risk on behalf of myself, or, I don't think I'd want to have to persevere through something, but on behalf of this other person, I think they can do it or I will help them through it or something else like this, or, I can't accept the risk on behalf of them. So that's not good or bad. That's just different about making a decision on behalf of oneself as compared to making a decision on behalf of someone else. When there's two people trying to be proxies on behalf of a third person, on behalf of a child, that's a really, really complex task, and it deserves support. And so, pediatric neural palliative medicine can function, then, as this neutral space, as this kind of almost coaching opportunity alongside the other medical doctors to give parents an opportunity when their minds are calm---not in the heat of the moment---to talk about how they see their child, how they've shown up themselves, what they've seen go well, what they've struggled with. And how,, then we can feel prepared for future decision making times, future high-stress encounters, about what will be important to ground them in those moments, even though we can't predict fully what those circumstances might be. Dr Smith: It sounds, you know, from talking to you and having read the article, that these sorts of issues evolve over time, right? And you have commented on this already from your very first answer. And you do describe a framework for how parents think---their mental model, I guess---of, you know, a child with a serious illness. And this sounds like appreciation of that's really important in providing care. Maybe you can talk us through that topic? Dr Treat: I refer to this concept of prognostic awareness in all of the conversations that we have with families. So, what I mean by prognostic awareness is the degree of insight that an individual has about what's currently happening with their child and what may happen in the future regarding the disease and/or the complications. And when we meet people early on in their journey, often their prognostic awareness, that sense of insight about what's going on, can be limited because it requires lived experience to build. Oftentimes time is a factor in that, we gain more lived experience over time, but it's not just time that goes into building that. It's often having a child who has a complication. Sometimes it's experiencing a hospitalization. That transfer from a cognitive understanding of what's going on, from a lived experience about what's going on, really amplifies that prognostic awareness, and it changes season by season in terms of what that family is going through and what they're willing to tolerate. Dr Smith: You introduced a new term for me, which is hyper-capableism. Can you talk about that? I found that really interesting and, you know, it reminds me a lot of the epiphanies that we've had about coma and coma prognosis. So, what's hyper-capableism? Dr Treat: Yes. In neurology, we have to be very aware of our views on ableism, on understanding how we prognosticate in relation to what we value about our abilities. And hyper-capableism refers to someone who feels very competent both cognitively and from a motor standpoint and fosters that sense of value around those two aspects to a high degree. I'm referencing that in the article with regard to medicine, because medicine, the rigors of training, the rigors of practice, require that someone has mental and motor fortitude. That neurology practice and medical practice in general can breed this attitude around the value of skills in both of those areas. And we have to be careful in order to give our patients and families the best care, to not overly project our values and our sense of what's good and bad in the world regarding ableism. Impairments can look different in different social contexts. And when the social context doesn't support an impairment, that's where people struggle. That's where people have stigma. And I think there's a lot of work that we can do in society at large to help improve accommodations for impairment so that we have less ableism in society. Dr Smith: Another term that I found really interesting kind of going back to parents is the "good parent identity." Maybe you can talk about that? Dr Treat: Good parent identity, good parent narrative, is something that is inherent to the journey when you're trying to take care of and make decisions on behalf of a child. And whether you're in a medical context or outside of a medical context, all parents have this either explicit or implicit sense of themselves about what it means to do right by their child. This comes up very poignantly in complex medical conditions because there are so many narratives about what parents ought to do on behalf of their child, and some of those roles can be in tension with one another. It's a whole lot of verbs that often fall under that identity. It's about being able to love and support and take good care of and make good decisions on behalf of someone. But it's also about protecting them from harm and treating their pain and being able to respond to them and know their cues and know these details about them. And you can't, sometimes, do multiple of those things at once. You can't give them as much safety and health as possible and also protect them from pain and suffering when they have a serious illness, when they need care in the hospital that might require a treatment that might be invasive or burdensome to them. And so, trying to be a good parent in the face of not being able to fulfill all those different verbs or ideas about what a good parent might do is a big task. And it can help to make it an explicit part of the conversation about what that family feels like their good parent roles might be in a particular situation. Dr Smith: I want to shift a little bit, Lauren, that's a really great answer. And just, you know, listening to you, your language and your tongue is incredibly positive, which is exciting. But, you know, you have talked about up and downs, and I wanted you to comment on a quote. I actually wrote it down, I'm going to read it to you, because you mentioned this early on in your article: "the heavy emotional and psychological impacts of bearing witness to suffering as a child neurologist." I think all of us, no matter how excited we are about all the therapeutic development, see patients who are suffering. And it's hard when it's a child and you're seeing a family. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that comment and how you balance that. You're clearly- you're energized in your career, but you do have to bear witness to suffering. Dr Treat: You're right. Child neurologists do incredible work, it's an incredible, exciting field, and there are a lot of challenges that we see people face. And we see it impacts their lives in really intense ways over the course of time. We bear witness to marriages that fall apart. We bear witness to families that lose jobs or have to transition big pieces of their identity in order to care for their children. And that impacts us. And we hold the collective weight of the things that we are trying to improve but sometimes feel less efficacious than we hoped that we could around some of these aspects of people's lives. And so, pediatric neuropalliative medicine is also about supporting colleagues and being able to talk to colleagues about how the care of the patients and the really real effort that we exert on their behalf and the caring that we have in our hearts for them, how that matters. Even if the outcome doesn't change, it's something that matters for our work and for our connections with these families. It's really important. Dr Smith: I wonder, maybe we can end by learning a little bit about your journey? And maybe this is your opportunity to- I know we have students and residents who listen to us, and junior faculty. I think neuropalliative care is obviously an important issue. There's a whole Continuum issue on it---no pun intended---but what was your journey, and maybe what's your pitch? Dr Treat: I'm just going to give a little bit of a snippet from a poem by Andrea Gibson, who's a poet, that I think speaks really clearly to this. They say a difficult life is not less worth living than a gentle one. Joy is simply easier to carry than sorrow. I think that sums these things up really well, that we find a lot of meaning in the work that we do. And it's not that it's easier or harder, it's just that these things all matter. I'm going to speak now, Gordon, to your question about how I got to my journey. When I went into pediatrics and then neuro in my training, I have always loved the brain. It's always been so crucial to what I wanted to do and how I wanted to be in the world. And when I was in my training, I saw that a lot of the really impactful conversations that we were having felt like we left something out. It felt like we couldn't talk about some of the anticipated struggles that we would anticipate on a human level. We could talk about the rate and the volume of the G tube, but we couldn't talk about how this was going to impact a mother's sense of being able to nourish and bond and care for their child because we didn't have answers for those things. And as I went on in my journey, I realized that even if we don't have answers, it's still important for us to acknowledge those things and talk about them and be there for our patients in those conversations. Dr Smith: Well, Lauren, what a great way to end, and what a wonderful conversation, and what a great article. Congratulations and thank you. Dr Treat: Thank you, Gordon. It was a pleasure to be here. Dr Smith: Again today, I've been interviewing Dr Lauren Treat about her really great article on neuropalliative medicine in pediatric neurology practice. This article appears in the December 2025 Continuum issue on neuropalliative care. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this issue and other issues. And thanks again to you, our listeners, for joining us today. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, associate editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.
Sales Game Changers | Tip-Filled Conversations with Sales Leaders About Their Successful Careers
This is episode 808. Read the complete transcription on the Sales Game Changers Podcast website here. This is a special episode of the "Office Hours - Sales Professors Unplugged Podcast." The show feature interviews with sales professors at universities with a sales excellence programs. Many of the universities are members of the University Sales Center Alliance. Watch the interview on YouTube here. The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here. FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast! Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts! Purchase Fred Diamond's best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now! Today's show is a special "Office Hours - Sales Professors Unplugged" episode featuring Andy McGowan, Director, Center for Professional Selling at Virginia Commonwealth University. Find Andy on LinkedIn. Andy's TIP: "The best sales professionals never stop training; the moment you think you're done learning is the moment you start falling behind."
John Mlynczak is the President and CEO of NAMM, where he leads the world's largest music products trade association at a pivotal moment in its 125-year history. Appointed in 2023 as the industry emerged from the COVID era, John has focused on evolving the NAMM Show through a relationship-first, technology-driven approach that strengthens year-round engagement and meaningful connections for members and exhibitors.A lifelong musician, educator, and technology leader, John brings a rare blend of creative empathy and strategic vision to his role. Prior to NAMM, he served as Vice President of Music Education & Technology at Hal Leonard, overseeing global education strategy and leading platforms such as Noteflight and Essential Elements Interactive. Earlier in his career, he was Director of Education at PreSonus Audio, where he helped shape curriculum, products, and outreach for music education technology.John has spent many years in higher education as an adjunct professor at institutions including VanderCook College of Music, Louisiana State University, and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, while also serving as President of the Technology Institute for Music Education (TI:ME). He is a Google Level 2 Certified Educator, a frequent speaker on music education and advocacy, and has served on numerous national committees supporting arts education.As a performer, John is an accomplished trumpeter with experience ranging from orchestral and pit work to jazz and contemporary ensembles. He holds a Bachelor of Music Education from Virginia Commonwealth University and Master's degrees in Music Performance and Education Leadership from Louisiana State University.At the core of his leadership philosophy is a belief that technology should enhance - not replace - human connection, and that relationships remain the most powerful force in the music industry.This Episode is brought to you by ETC and Main Light
Today we're talking about direct restorative materials that can truly change the course of your patients' dental health — and no, not just composite, but glass ionomer and resin-modified glass ionomer. Used strategically, these materials can help patients avoid a lifetime of fillings, crowns, and repeat dental work. And adopting this conservative approach doesn't mean sacrificing revenue — in fact, building a practice focused on preserving healthy tooth structure attracts patients who value care that's truly in their best interest. Joining us is Dr. Brian Nový, a leading cariologist at Virginia Commonwealth University with faculty appointments at Harvard and Western University, and a private practice owner in Salem, Massachusetts. He'll explain how glass ionomer and RMGI bond to teeth, their clinical applications, address concerns about strength and aesthetics, and show how they can transform long-term patient outcomes.
Former UGA Player of the Year and Utah Tech horse beast Zach Felts Zach Felts returns home from Virginia Commonwealth University for the holidays and wins the Coral Canyon Amateur. Felts joins the pod. Sponsored by Goldenwest Credit Union.
Donny Lind is the Men's Basketball Head Coach at Mount St. Mary's University. In his first season, the 2024-25 team captured the university's first Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) championship with a victory over Iona in the conference title game. They would notch a NCAA Tournament victory - the program's third - by defeating American in the First Four. The 23 wins by the team set a Division I record and were the most by any Mount St. Mary's squad since 1986-87.Lind previously served on coaching staffs at both Radford and UNCG under head coach Mike Jones from 2016 - 2024In his first stint at the Mount from 2013 – 2016 he was as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator and was on staff for the team's 2014 Northeast Conference Championship.Former Mount Head Coach Jamion Christian brought Lind along from Virginia Commonwealth University where he worked as a graduate manager before being elevated to video coordinator. He was part of the Rams' storied run as the team won 84 games, including seven NCAA Tournament games and the team's run to the 2011 Final Four.On this episode Mike and Donny discuss the importance of fostering relationships in the realm of coaching. Lind shares how aiding the personal growth of both his players and staff is critical to his success. In this discussion, we delve into the intricate dynamics of cultivating a competitive culture within the team, a necessity for achieving success. Lind reflects on his journey, from his upbringing in a basketball-centric environment to his evolution as a coach, underscoring the significance of resilience and adaptability in the face of challenges. Through a serious examination of the modern landscape of college athletics, he articulates how he seeks to impact his players within the limited time frame afforded by today's NIL and transfer portal environment.Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @hoopheadspod for the latest updates on episodes, guests, and events from the Hoop Heads Pod.Make sure you're subscribed to the Hoop Heads Pod on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there please leave us a 5 star rating and review. Your ratings help your friends and coaching colleagues find the show. If you really love what you're hearing recommend the Hoop Heads Pod to someone and get them to join you as a part of Hoop Heads Nation.Grab pen and paper before you listen to this episode with Donny Lind, Men's Basketball Head Coach at Mount St. Mary's University.Website - https://mountathletics.com/sports/mens-basketballEmail - donny.lind@gmail.comTwitter/X - @dslindVisit our Sponsors!Dr. Dish BasketballA Perfect Gift To Your Team for the Holidays!Score Big on Dr. Dish Basketball's End of Year Sale and give your team the gift of extra, more efficient reps this season!
Universities have been trying to curb dangerous binge drinking for years. Today's students are glued to their phones, and Abby Braitman (Old Dominion University) and her colleagues are meeting them where they are for interventions. And: Meagan Brem (Virginia Tech) says that drinking is intertwined with a lot of the intimate partner violence that happens on college campuses. Later in the show: There's a psychedelic renaissance going on in Javier González-Maeso's (Virginia Commonwealth University) biochemistry lab. He's hoping to develop a new drug using psilocybin, the component found in magic mushrooms, to help people battling alcohol abuse disorder. Plus: How Jasmohan Bajaj (Virginia Commonwealth University) discovered that addiction lives in the gut, not the mind.
Careful assessment and individualized care, provided by a skilled multidisciplinary care team, are emphasized in the holistic approach to neuropalliative care, which considers physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and existential aspects for people with neuromuscular diseases. In this episode, Gordon Smith, MD, FAAN, speaks with David J. Oliver, PhD, FRCP, FRCGP, FEAN, author of the article "Neuropalliative Care in Neuromuscular Disorders" in the Continuum® December 2025 Neuropalliative Care issue. Dr. Smith is a Continuum® Audio interviewer and a professor and chair of neurology at Kenneth and Dianne Wright Distinguished Chair in Clinical and Translational Research at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Dr. Oliver is an honorary professor of Tizard Centre at the University of Kent in Canterbury, United Kingdom. Additional Resources Read the article: Neuropalliative Care in Neuromuscular Disorders Subscribe to Continuum®: shop.lww.com/Continuum Earn CME (available only to AAN members): continpub.com/AudioCME Continuum® Aloud (verbatim audio-book style recordings of articles available only to Continuum® subscribers): continpub.com/Aloud More about the American Academy of Neurology: aan.com Social Media facebook.com/continuumcme @ContinuumAAN Host: @gordonsmithMD Full episode transcript available here Dr Jones: This is Dr Lyell Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Continuum. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio. Be sure to visit the links in the episode notes for information about earning CME, subscribing to the journal, and exclusive access to interviews not featured on the podcast. Dr Smith: Hello, this is Dr Gordon Smith. Today I've got the great pleasure of interviewing Dr David Oliver about his article on neuropalliative care and neuromuscular disorders, which appears in the December 2025 Continuum issue on neuropalliative care. David, welcome to the Continuum podcast, and please introduce yourself to our audience. Dr Oliver: Thank you. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here. I'm a retired consultant in palliative medicine in the UK. I worked at the Wisdom Hospice in Rochester for over thirty years, and I'm also an honorary professor at the University of Kent in Canterbury in the UK. I've had a long interest in palliative care in neurological diseases. Hopefully we can talk about a bit later. Dr Smith: I really look forward to learning a little bit more about your path and experiences. But I wonder if, before we get into the meat of neuropalliative care with a focus on neuromuscular, if maybe you can kind of set the stage by just defining palliative care. I mean, my experience is that people think of this in different ways, and a lot of folks think- hear palliative care, and they immediately go to end-of-life care or comfort care. So, what- how should we think about maybe the discipline of palliative care or neuropalliative care? Dr Oliver: I see palliative care as very much responding to people's needs, whether that's physical needs, psychological needs, social or spiritual or existential. So, it can be much earlier in the disease progression. And I think particularly for neurological diseases, early involvement may be very important. Dr Smith: That was actually going to be my first substantive question, really, was when to begin the conversation and what does that look like and how does it evolve over time. You have a really great figure in the article that kind of emphasizes the various stages within a patient's journey that, you know, palliative care can become involved. But I wonder if you could use ALS as a good example and describe what that looks like from when a patient is first diagnosed with ALS through their course? Dr Oliver: I think particularly in ALS at the beginning, soon after diagnosis, someone may have a lot of distress and a lot of questions that they need answering. This is a disease they've not had any contact with before. And they don't understand what's going on, they don't understand the disease. So, there may be a great need to have the opportunity to talk about the disease, what may happen, what is happening, how it's going to affect them and their family. As think time goes on, there may be later they develop swallowing problems, and that will need to be talking about a feeding tube and gastrostomy. And again, there may be a lot of issues for the person and their family. As they deteriorate, they may have respiratory problems and need to have discussion about ventilatory support, either by PAP, noninvasive ventilation, or even tracheostomy. And again, I think that's a big issue that needs wide discussion. And then it may be at the final few months of the disease, where they are deteriorating, that they may have increased needs, and their families may have those needs after the death. And I think often families bereaved from someone with a neurological disease such as ALS need a great deal of support, having many mixed emotions. There may be a feeling of relief that they're not involved in that caring, but then a feeling of guilt that they shouldn't be having those feelings. So, I think that can happen over a period of… what with ALS it may be two, three, four years, but it may be similar changes over time with any patient with a neurological disease. It may be ten or fifteen years with Parkinson's or five to ten years with a progressive supranuclear palsy, but there'll be this similar need to look at palliative care during their disease progression. Dr Smith: So, I'm curious at the time of diagnosis of ALS, how far out in the future do you provide information? So a specific question would be, do you talk about end-of-life management? In my experience, ALS patients are sometimes interested in knowing about that. Or do you really focus on what's in front of you in the next three to six months, for instance? Dr Oliver: I think it's both. Obviously, we need to talk about the next three to six months, but often giving patients the opportunity to talk about what's going to happen in the future, what may happen at the end of life, I think is important. And I think a disease like ALS, if they look it up on the Internet, they may have a lot of very distressing entries there. There's a lot about how distressing dying with ALS is. And actually confront those and discuss those issues early is really important. Dr Smith: So of course, the other thing that comes up immediately with an ALS diagnosis---or, for that matter, with any other neurodegenerative problem---is prognosis. Do you have guidance and how our listeners who are giving a diagnosis of ALS or similar disorder should approach the prognostication discussion? Dr Oliver: It's often very difficult. Certainly in the UK, people may have- be a year into their disease from their first symptoms before they're diagnosed, and I've seen figures, that's similar across the world. So, people may be actually quite way through their disease progression, but I do think we have to remember that the figures show that at five years, 25% of people are still alive, and 5 to 10% are still alive at ten years. We mustn't say you are going to die in the next two or three years, because that may not be so. And I think to have the vagueness but also the opportunity to talk, that we are talking of a deterioration over time and we don't know how that will be for you. I always stress how individual I think ALS is for patients. Dr Smith: One of the other concepts that is familiar with anyone who does ALS and clearly comes through in your article---which is really outstanding, by the way. So, thank you and congratulations for that---is the importance of multidisciplinary teams. Can you talk a little bit about how neuropalliative care sits within a multidisciplinary care model? Dr Oliver: I think the care should be multidisciplinary. Certainly in the UK, we recommended multidisciplinary team care for ALS in particular, from the time of diagnosis. And I think palliative care should be part of that multidisciplinary team. It may be a member of the team who has that palliative care experience or someone with specialist experience. Because I think the important thing is that everyone caring for someone with ALS or other neuromuscular diseases should be providing palliative care to some extent: listening to people, discussing their goals, managing their symptoms. And a specialist may only be needed if those are more complicated or particularly difficult. So, I think it is that the team needs to work together to support people and their families. So, looking at the physical aspects where the physiotherapist or occupational therapist may be very important, the psychologicals are a counsellor or psychologist. The social aspects, most of our patients are part of wider families, and we need to be looking at supporting their carers and within their family as well as the person. And so that may involve social work and other professionals. And the spiritual, the why me, their fears about the future, may involve a spiritual counsellor or a chaplain or, if appropriate, a religious leader appropriate to that- for that person. So, I think it is that wider care provided by the team. Dr Smith: I'm just reflecting on, again, your earlier answers about the Continuum of neuropalliative care. Knowing your patient is super valuable here. So, having come to know someone through their disease course must pay dividends as you get to some of these harder questions that come up later during the disease progression. Dr Oliver: I think that's the very important use of palliative care from early on in the diagnosis. It's much easier to talk about, perhaps, the existential fears of someone while they can still talk openly. To do that through a communication aid can be very difficult. To talk about someone's fear of death through a communication aid is really very, very difficult. The multidisciplinary team, I think, works well if all the members are talking together. So that perhaps the speech therapist has been to see someone and has noticed their breathing is more difficult, comes back and talks to the doctor and the physiotherapist. The social worker notices the speech is more difficult and comes back and speaks to the speech therapist. So, I think that sort of team where people are working very closely together can really optimize the care. And as you said, knowing the person, and for them to know you and to trust you, I think that's important. Those first times that people meet is so important in establishing trust. And if you only meet people when they're very disabled and perhaps not able to communicate very easily, that's really difficult. Dr Smith: I think you're reading my mind, actually, because I was really interested in talking about communication. And you mentioned a few times in your article about voice banking, which is likely to be a new concept for many of our listeners. And I would imagine the spectrum of tools that are becoming available for augmented communication for patients who have ALS or other disorders that impair speech must be impressive. I wonder if you could give us an update on what the state of the art is in terms of approaching communication. Dr Oliver: Well, I think we all remember Stephen Hawking, the professor from Cambridge, who had a very robotic voice which wasn't his. Now people may have their own voice on a communication aid. I think the use of whether it's a mobile phone or iPad, other computer systems, can actually turn what someone types into their own voice. And voice banking is much easier than it used to be. Only a few years ago, someone would have to read for an hour or two hours so the computer could pick up all the different aspects of their voice. Now it's a few minutes. And it has been even- I've known that people have taken their answer phone off a telephone and used that to produce a voice that is very, very near to the person. So that when someone does type out, the voice that comes out will be very similar to their own. I remember one video of someone who'd done this and they called their dog, and the dog just jumped into the air when he suddenly heard his master's voice for the first time in several months. So, I think it's very dramatic and very helpful for the person, who no longer feels a robot, but also for their family that can recognize their father, their husband, their wife's speech again. Dr Smith: Very humanizing, isn't it? Dr Oliver: There is a stigma of having the robotic voice. And if we can remove that stigma and someone can feel more normal, that would be our aim. Dr Smith: As you've alluded to, and for the large majority---really all of our ALS patients, barring something unexpected---we end up in preparing for death and preparing for end of life. I wonder what advice you have in that process, managing fear of death and working with our patients as they approach the end of their journey. Dr Oliver: I think the most important thing is listening and trying to find what their particular concerns are. And as I said earlier, they may have understood from what they've read in books or the Internet that the death from ALS is very distressing. However, I think we can say there are several studies now from various countries where people have looked at what happens at the end of life for people with ALS. Choking to death, being very distressed, are very, very rare if the symptoms are managed effectively beforehand, preparations are made so that perhaps medication can be given quickly if someone does develop some distress so that it doesn't become a distressing crisis. So, I think we can say that distress at the end of life with ALS is unusual, and probably no different to any other disease group. It's important to make sure that people realize that with good symptom control, with good palliative care, there is a very small risk of choking or of great distress at the end of life. Dr Smith: Now, I would imagine many patients have multiple different types of fear of death; one, process, what's the pain and experience going to be like? But there's also being dead, you know, fear of the end of life. And then this gets into comments you made earlier about spirituality and psychology. How do you- what's your experience in handling that? Because that's a harder problem, it seems, to really provide concrete advice about. Dr Oliver: Yeah. And so, I think it's always important to know when someone says they're frightened of the future, to check whether it is the dying process or after death. I've got no answer for what's going to happen afterwards, but I can listen to what someone may have in their past, their concerns, their experience. You know, is their experience of someone dying their memories of someone screaming in pain in an upstairs bedroom while they were a child? Was their grandfather died? Trying to find out what particular things may be really a problem to them and that we can try and address. But others, we can't answer what's going to happen after death. If someone is particularly wanting to look at that, I think that may be involving a spiritual advisor or their local spiritual/religious leader. But often I think it's just listening and understanding where they are. Dr Smith: So, you brought up bereavement earlier and you discussed it in the article. In my experience is that oftentimes the families are very, very impacted by the journey of ALS. And while ALS patients are remarkably resilient, it's a huge burden on family, loved ones, and their community. Can you talk a bit about the role of palliative care in the bereavement process, maybe preparing for bereavement and then after the loss of their loved one? Dr Oliver: Throughout the disease progression, we need to be supporting the carers as much as we are the patient. They are very much involved. As you said, the burden of care may be quite profound and very difficult for them. So, it's listening, supporting them, finding out what their particular concerns are. Are they frightened about what's going to happen at the end of life as well? Are they concerned of how they're going to cope or how the person's going to cope? And then after the death, it's allowing them to talk about what's happened and how they are feeling now, cause I think having had that enormous input in care, then suddenly everything stops. And also, the support systems they've had for perhaps months of the carers coming in, the doctor, the nurse, the physiotherapist, everyone coming in, they all stop coming. So, their whole social system suddenly stops and becomes much reduced. And I'm afraid certainly in the UK if someone is bereaved, they may not have the contact with their friends and family because they're afraid to come and see them. So, they may become quite isolated and reduced in what they can do. So, I think it's allowing them to discuss what has happened. And I think that's as important sometimes for members of the multidisciplinary team, because we as doctors, nurses and the wider team will also have some aspects of bereavement as we face not seeing that person who we've looked after for many years and perhaps in quite an intensive way. So, we need to be looking at how we support ourselves. And I think that's another important role of the multidisciplinary team. I always remember in our team, sometimes I would say, I find this person really difficult to cope with. And the rest of the people around the team would go have a sigh of relief because they felt the same, but they didn't like to say. And once we could talk about it, we could support each other and work out what we could do to help us help the patient in the most effective way. Dr Smith: Well, David, I think that's a great point to end on. I think you've done a really great job of capturing why someone would want to be a palliative care specialist or be involved in palliative care, because one of the themes throughout this conversation is the very significant personal and care impact that you have on patients and families. So, I really appreciate your sharing your wisdom. I really encourage all of our listeners to check out the article, it's really outstanding. I wonder if maybe you might just briefly tell us a little bit about how you got into this space? It's obviously one for which you have a great deal of passion and wisdom. How did you end up where you are? Dr Oliver: I became interested in palliative care as a medical student, and actually I trained as a family doctor, but I went to Saint Christopher's Hospice following that. I had actually had contact with them while I was a medical student, so I worked Saint Christopher's Hospice in South London when Dame Cecily Saunders was still working there. And at that time Christopher's had sixty-two beds, and at least eight of those beds were reserved for people with ALS or other neurological diseases. And I became very involved in one or two patients and their care. And Dame Sicily Saunders asked me to write something on ALS for their bookshelf that they had on the education area. So, I wrote, I think, four drafts. I went from sort of C minus to just about passable on the fourth draft. And that became my big interest in particularly ALS, and as time went on, in other neurological diseases. When I went to the Wisdom Hospice as a consultant, I was very keen to carry on looking after people with ALS, and we involved ourselves with other neurological patients. That's how I got started. Having that interest, listening to patients, documenting what we did became important as a way of showing how palliative care could have a big role in neurological disease. And over the years, I've been pressing again and again for the early involvement of palliative care in neurological diseases. And I think that is so important so that there can be a proper holistic assessment of people, that they can build up the trust in their carers and in the multidisciplinary team so that they can live as positively as possible. And as a result of that, that their death will be without distress and with their family with them. Dr Smith: Well, David, you've convinced and inspired me, and I'm confident you have our listeners as well. Thank you so much for a really informative, enjoyable, inspiring conversation. Dr Oliver: Thank you for inviting me. Dr Smith: Again, today I've been interviewing Dr David Oliver about his article on neuropalliative care and neuromuscular disorders, which appears in the December 2025 Continuum issue on neuropalliative care. Be sure to check out Continuum Audio episodes from this and other issues, and thanks to our listeners for joining us today. Dr Monteith: This is Dr Teshamae Monteith, Associate Editor of Continuum Audio. If you've enjoyed this episode, you'll love the journal, which is full of in-depth and clinically relevant information important for neurology practitioners. Use the link in the episode notes to learn more and subscribe. AAN members, you can get CME for listening to this interview by completing the evaluation at continpub.com/audioCME. Thank you for listening to Continuum Audio.
From her Mayberry‑like childhood in rural Virginia to pioneering MRCP and leading one of the nation's largest academic radiology departments, Ann S. Fulcher, MD, Chair of Radiology at Virginia Commonwealth University, has built a career defined by service, integrity, and curiosity. In this episode, she sits down with host Geoffrey Rubin, MD, MBA, FACR, for a warm and deeply personal conversation tracing her journey from the influence of a WWII veteran father who taught her the value of duty and compassion, to the mentors who guided her toward abdominal imaging, to the unexpected leadership opportunities that emerged during her military service at Andrews Air Force Base. Dr. Fulcher reflects on becoming a department chair earlier than she ever imagined, the lessons she carried from the Air Force into academic medicine, and the evolving challenges facing radiology's leaders today. She shares candid insights about building a cohesive culture across expanding clinical sites, sustaining research and education amid workforce pressures, and the responsibility leaders hold to champion quality and care in an increasingly productivity‑driven environment. Beyond radiology, Dr. Fulcher discusses the life‑changing role photography has played in her well‑being - awakening creativity, restoring balance, and even uplifting colleagues and patients during challenging times. Her reflections on mentorship, purpose, and “what you do with your dash” offer a moving reminder of the impact a single career can have. Engaging, humble, and full of heart, this conversation explores what it means to lead with clarity, compassion, and authenticity while never losing sight of the joy in the work itself. Production support for this episode of this RLI “Taking the Lead” podcast has been provided by the Virginia Radiological Society, a statewide professional organization dedicated to improving the health of patients and society by making imaging safe, effective and accessible to those who need it. Visit www.varadsoc.org for more information.
Adam Young is a trauma therapist and the host of The Place We Find Ourselves podcast. He is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) with master's degrees in social work (Virginia Commonwealth University) and divinity (Emory University). Adam regularly speaks at conferences and currently serves as a fellow with The Allender Center. He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with his wife and two children.
In September 2005, 17-year-old college freshman Taylor Behl left her dorm at Virginia Commonwealth University for a short late-night drive—and never returned. What began as a routine missing-person report quickly spiraled into a massive search effort that drew national attention and exposed a disturbing web of relationships, manipulation, and obsession.In this episode of Lurk, we retrace Taylor's final hours, the frantic investigation that followed, and the unexpected suspect who had been hiding in plain sight. From downtown Richmond to the quiet backroads of Mathews County, we follow the trail that ultimately led to the heartbreaking discovery of Taylor's body—and the truth behind her murder.Join us as we explore:Taylor Behl's life and first weeks at VCUHer sudden disappearance and the initial responseThe digital clues and MySpace connections that shaped the investigationThe eerie behavior of amateur photographer Benjamin FawleyHow search teams uncovered the location of Taylor's remainsThe case's resolution and the legal aftermathThis is the story of a promising young woman whose life was stolen—and of the dogged investigators, family members, and volunteers who refused to stop searching.Listener discretion is advised.Subscribe & Follow:Don't miss future episodes of Lurk! Follow us on Spotify Apple Podcasts etc. and hit that subscribe button.Join the conversation: Follow us on social media for updates, discussions, and to share your thoughts on this case.Lurk on FacebookLurk on TwitterLurk on InstagramWe have a new Facebook Group join in the discussion! Lurk Podcast Facebook GroupNew Merch Store!We are also now found on YouTube- Lurk on YouTubeBackground Music Royalty and Copyright Free MusicIntro and Outro music purchased through AudioJunglewith Music Broadcast License (1 Million)Send us a textSupport the show
Jonathan Bennet, owner of Unsprung Upholstery is originally from Martinsville, VA. He caught the sewing bug from his great grandmother at a young age. He moved to Richmond, VA on a whim in August of 1989 and earned a BFA in Fashion Design from Virginia Commonwealth University. Directly after graduation, Jonathan taught in the Fashion Design department as an adjunct professor for 13 years. He started his first workroom job in 1997, learned how to make various types of window treatments, cushions, pillows, and more; since then, he has done freelance workroom client projects in his home for over 25 years. Jonathan opened Unsprung Upholstery LLC in August 2019 and will continue this beautiful journey for the rest of his life! Website: UnsprungUpholstery.com IG: UnsprungUpholstery FB: Unsprung Upholstery Company Links and Resources; Real Workroom Tours Video with Jonathan, Jeanelle Dech and Kelly McCrory The Drapery & Design Digital Digest November/December 2025 The Sew Much More Podcast is sponsored by; Klimaka Studios The Workroom Channel Scarlet Thread Consulting The WCAA The Curtains and Soft Furnishings Resource Library National Upholstery Association Workroom Tech
Noah Scalin is an artist, author, and activist. He founded the art and innovation consultancy Another Limited Rebellion in 2001 with the idea that he could make a living doing what he enjoyed and effect positive change in the world. Since then, Noah has traveled the world bringing his message of creative practice to everyone from incarcerated teenagers to Fortune 500 executives. A graduate of NYU's Tisch School of The Arts, Noah started his career as the Art Director for Troma Entertainment and Avirex Clothing. Noah's artwork is collected internationally and has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Mütter Museum and NYC's Times Square. He is the author of six books — most recently Creative Sprint which he co-wrote with his sister/business partner Mica. Noah was the inaugural artist-in-residence at both Virginia Commonwealth University's School of Business and the Strome College of Business at Old Dominion University. His 2020 collaboration with Old Navy was one of the most viewed commercials of the year and in 2022 he won the Artfields Grand Prize.Social media:https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahscalin/https://www.instagram.com/noahscalin/Websites:https://www.anotherlimitedrebellion.com/https://noahscalinkeynote.com/https://www.noahscalin.com/ ***********Susanne Mueller / www.susannemueller.biz TEDX Talk, May 2022: Running and Life: 5KM Formula for YOUR Successhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT_5Er1cLvY 700+ weekly blogs / 500+ podcasts / 1 Ironman Triathlon / 5 half ironman races / 26 marathon races / 4 books / 1 Mt. Kilimanjaro / 1 TEDx Talk
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